Convergent
by Luke Storyhammer
Summary: con·ver·gent 1. coming closer together, esp. in characteristics or ideas; united; opposite of DIVERGENT. Surviving Dauntless initiation is only the first of ex-Candor Markus Woodley's problems. When things quickly take a turn for the worse, knowing he is no longer in Candor, who will he be able to trust?
1. The Aptitude Test

"Are you prepared for your aptitude test today, Markus?" my father asks, turning around in his seat to study me intently.

"No. I'm nervous what my results will be," I reply honestly.

My father is a high-ranking Candor official who carries with him a lot of authority. While some of my other Candor buddies have had to take the bus or walk to school, my father is driving me in his sleek, silver car; one I am more than happy to show off to my friends.

"You have every reason to be nervous," my father says, turning the wheel as we pull in onto school grounds. "I won't be happy if you transfer, Markus."

"I know," I reply. "But you know I'll pick whatever my test results tell me."

"For your sake, then, it better be Candor," my father growls.

I nod at him. "I'll see you at home, Father."

I swing the car door open and step out lightly. Maurice, another Candor, waves to me at the school entrance, beckoning me forward. I rush over to him, looking over my shoulder as my dad drives the car out onto the street and moves away from the school.

"Hey," I greet as me and Maurice enter the school.

"Excited?" he asks as we move down the corridor to our first class of the day.

The aptitude test, which tells us sixteen year-olds which faction we have highest aptitude for, will only take place after lunch.

"Of course I'm excited. Nervous, too," I reply. "This test is going to tell me what kind of life I'd be most suited for, I'd be stupid to not be nervous."

"Beats me. Look at Vincent, he doesn't seem nervous at all," Maurice complains.

He points down the hallway, where Vincent, our fellow Candor; though a fellow Candor that me, Maurice and our group of friends have made clear we do not like; is leaning against a locker, flirting with a doe-eyed Amity girl.

"Like I said, only people who are stupid aren't nervous. Vincent's proof of that. Come on, let's get to class before we're late again," I spit.

* * *

When lunch is over, the factions sit in the cafeteria at their long tables.

The Erudite table is just a sea of blue. All of them are hunched over open books and notes covered in messy scribbles; studying madly. What could they possibly be studying for; it's not like anyone can prepare for the aptitude test in any way; no one knows what will be tested, and older faction members who have already taken the test are forbidden to tell any under seventeen-year old what goes on in there. Besides, I have a hunch that they change the test each year, but I might be wrong, given that no one under seventeen knows what will happen in the test in the first place.

The people at the Amity table are bubbly and lively, all smiling and grinning to each other, engaging in encouraging conversation and wishing each other luck for their tests. Maurice, our two friends Dmitri, Nikolai and I make sure to give them shrewd and contemptuous looks. As Candor members, our biggest enemy is Amity, seconded by Abnegation, mostly because Amity are willing to lie and deceive to uphold peace, which, as Candor knows, only creates more problems.

"I bet half of them don't even really mean what they say when they wish each other luck," Maurice scowls.

"That goes without question," Dmitri mutters darkly. "Look at them."

"They hide their true intentions with false smiles and faked pretenses of goodwill, just to preserve a flimsy excuse of peace based entirely on a foundation of lies," Nikolai grunts, eyeing them suspiciously.

The Dauntless table is, as ever, full of Dauntless who are talking at the top of their voices, cheering boisterously, playing cards and laughing wholeheartedly. Out of all the other factions, I have to say Dauntless feels the most similar to us. Honesty is very similar to bravery. After all, you have to be brave to be honest. Without courage, how would anyone be able to tell the truth in a difficult situation when lying would make it so much easier?

My eyes slide from Dauntless to the last table in the room, closest to ours, Abnegation. The Stiffs sit quietly on their own, either looking up at the sky, staring into space, or looking down at their intertwined fingers as they wait patiently. Very few of them are actually engaging in conversation or any sort of entertainment to pass the time. They're like robots, and it always bewilders me how anyone can live like that, keeping all their secrets to themselves, such that they cease to be human, only meant to serve others with their own ability. Their own lives don't matter to them. It's mostly the part where the Stiffs keep their secrets to themselves, and always quickly look away, as if wounded, when anyone talks to them, that makes me feel nothing but contempt towards them.

It's not just Candor that walk over the Stiffs. The Noses and Dauntless do too.

I crane my head as I hear two Abnegation sitting behind me talking to themselves in low voices.

"Hello, Katrina."

"Mary."

"How are you feeling?" the one with the blue-green eyes asks.

"Let's not talk about me. What about you?" Katrina says back.

I roll my eyes, putting my head in my hands to try and block out the conversation, because their timidness is killing me.

"No, no, I want to know about you."

"No, it's okay. Tell me about yourself."

"Oh, will you two just shut up already? It's not like either of you have anything to say about yourselves anyway," Maurice snaps at them.

The two girls jump, startled, and they look away hurriedly.

"Give them a break."

Maurice turns, his mouth open to retaliate, but he falls short when he sees the person who just spoke up to him is, most uncharacteristically, an Amity girl.

"If I think they're annoying, I should voice out my opinion, rather than keep it within myself and lie to them by making them believe I do not find their conversation sickening," Maurice retorts to the Amity girl. "Unlike people like you, of course, who would 'give them a break' so as to uphold a sense of peace that never existed in the first place."

The Amity girl flicks her dark black hair out of her eyes and says nothing.

Maurice snorts. "Typical. Honestly, you Stiffs and Amity are so introverted that it sometimes makes me nauseous."

The girl glares at him but walks away.

"See? You know she was going to tell me how much she hated me and what I was saying, but she kept that opinion to herself and walked off, denying me the truth to keep peace. These Stiffs and Amity are so predictable," Maurice rolls his eyes.

One by one, people filter out of the room as test administrators call their names. I watch as Dmitri leaves first, followed by a large group that includes Vincent and Mary. As the people come and go, finally, the test administrator announces my name.

"From Candor, Nikolai Tyler and Markus Woodley."

A Stiff administrator leads a group of ten; consisting of two members of each faction; out of the cafeteria, where ten rooms are separated by mirrors. Nikolai nods at me reassuringly; he enters Room 1 and me in Room 3.

Inside, it's an Erudite administrator waiting for me. Good, cause it's better than an Abnegation one.

My administrator is a short, stout man with tanned skin, bushy eyebrows, a square jaw and a shining bald head. He gestures for me to sit down in a chair next to him and I do so.

"Drink this," he orders, handing me a small vial of some strange liquid.

"Why? What is this?" I ask.

"Drink," he orders again.

I tip the vial back and pour the liquid down my throat as he adjusts and attaches wires to my forehead and chest, connecting them to a bunch of technological equipment laid out on a table next to him.

"It's a serum," he finally explains, showing the familiar Erudite characteristic of his faction that makes him unable to resist sharing information and knowledge.

He takes the empty vial from me. "Close your eyes. Open them when you're ready."

"Ready for what?" I close my eyes anyway.

I wait for the Erudite administrator to explain what I'm ready for, but this time, he doesn't. I wait a few more seconds before opening my eyes.

The Erudite man is gone. I'm alone in a wide room with mirrors surrounding me. The wires on my head and chest have vanished. So has all the equipment.

"This is something," I mutter to myself, getting up from the chair and studying the place, scratching my head.

The more I turn around, the more my reflection seems to duplicate in the mirrors on the walls.

I look down and find two tables, spread out in front of me. A hunk of cheese is laid out on the first table, a sharp knife on the other.

"Choose," a woman's voice says from behind me.

I whirl around but no one's there. Swallowing, I turn back to the two tables. "Choose?"

"Choose," she repeats.

I hesitate, my hand hovering over the knife. My father always taught me, a weapon is handy in an emergency. Choosing the cheese is just an illusion of softhearted-ness, picking the pacifist method over the violent one. It takes courage to be honest and with that in mind, I select the knife and pick it up in my hand. The hilt feels foreign in my fingers, but I grip it firmly, sure of my decision to be correct.

The sound of a deep growl shakes me from my thoughts and I whirl around again. This time, there is someone behind me. It's a dog, with a pointed nose and brown fur.

It growls at me, displaying a row of sharp teeth, dripping with saliva. I gulp and walk back slowly as the dog mimics me, moving forward, its eyes never leaving me. I know its intent; it's going to attack me.

My back bumps into the tables behind me. I chance a glance behind. The cheese has disappeared.

The dog barks loudly and that's when it pounces.

The dog jumps onto my torso and I fall back, tripping over the table and collapsing onto the ground. I grunt and force the dog up. It snaps its mouth and barks loudly in my face, droplets of its saliva coating me, blinding my eyes. I push its head up, so its fangs and teeth are far from my face and throat. Brandishing the knife, I sink it into the dog's neck.

It's growls subsides and with a defeated whimper, it sinks back onto the ground.

I hurry back to my feet, panting heavily, wiping my face of sweat and saliva.

Such a shame. I was actually a dog lover.

The room around me melts away and I find myself sitting back in my father's car. The man in the driver's seat turns around. It isn't my father; I recognize the facial features of Alfred Kang, current representative of Candor.

"Markus, tell me, this is important. Do you know this man?" he asks, holding out a small poster.

I'm more shocked by the fact that I'm sitting in my father's car with Alfred Kang for no reason whatsoever, but I know the aptitude test is designed to throw candidates off balance, to see what sort of aptitude their subconscious has. So I take the poster and study it.

I don't recognize the man in the mugshot, but I get the strange sense that I do, however, know him.

"Well? Do you?" Alfred spits, grabbing me by the shoulders. "Markus, answer me! Do you know him?"

"I...I think so," I mutter, startled by his sudden violence.

He relaxes. "So...you know him?"

"Yes," I say. "I'm not lying, sir."

"I know you're not." Alfred shoots me a weird smile and when I blink, the car has disappeared.

I'm standing on an empty beach. Behind me is the entrance to a dense forest, in front of me is the ocean. Waves of saltwater lap at my feet and I pick up a small green bottle from the sand.

There's a note inside. I chuckle to myself, sliding the note out by holding the bottle upside down. It drops into my hand and I unfold it tentatively.

You have been stranded on this island for life. Which would you prefer to have - a companion, or fresh drinking water?

"That's a stupid question," I mutter to myself. "What use would a companion be if I die of dehydration? Drinking water it is!"

I hear something land onto the beach in a thud behind me. I whip around and smile as I look at a small bottle of water, lying in the sand.

I step forward to pick it up when I hear someone else whooping. Vincent runs in from the other side of the beach. It takes me a moment to see that he's running towards the only bottle of fresh water left on the beach.

"That's mine!" I yell.

I reach down and pull off my shoe. When Vincent gets close enough, I pull my arm back and throw. My shoe flies in the air and nails Vincent in the temple. He falls to the ground, eyes rolling back in his sockets, knocked out cold.

I whoop and cheer just as the sand and beach disappears from beneath me. Finally, my surroundings take shape. I'm standing in the middle of Candor Headquarters.

Alfred is here again. He stands next to me, next to a girl who is being held down in a chair. All around me, there are Candor members seated in rows of chairs, watching us.

"Markus, you're here. Good," Alfred says.

I look at the girl in the chair. With a start, I realize she's the girl from Amity, who Maurice insulted. She is strapped to the chair by ropes. I see the chair is connected by a bunch of wires and thick cables.

It's an electric chair.

"All of us are gathered here today to witness the execution of this convicted murderer," Alfred announces to the room as a whole.

He holds out a poster. It's the same poster of the man that he'd shown me in the car.

Alfred beckons me forward. He points to the Amity girl, then at the poster. "Markus, since you know the man in this picture, can you verify for us...is this that man?"

"What?" I laugh a bit to myself, confused.

It was clear to me that the Amity girl sitting in the chair right now is not the man in the poster. That's when I realize this is another test.

I look at the man in the poster and, to my surprise, I realize: the man in the poster is my father.

I look at the Amity girl, and back to my father's picture. If I let Alfred execute the innocent Amity girl, would that save my father from execution?

"Markus, well? Is this the man we've been looking for?" Alfred prompts.

If Alfred means to execute my father, I won't let him. Even if it means exchanging an innocent girl's life for his.

"Yes," I lie, for the first time in my life. "That's him."

Alfred nods. He snaps his fingers. Someone throws a switch and I watch, horrified, as the Amity girl jerks around in the chair, volts of electricity pulsing through the cables and into her body.

I hear an audible snap as her neck breaks and the chair crashes to the ground.

* * *

My eyes fly open. It takes a while to get my heart rate to drop to its usual pace and when it does, I turn to see the Erudite man taking the wires off my head and chest.

"I have your results," he says.

"Well? Read them," I prompt.

"You have a strong aptitude for Dauntless," the man says.

My jaw drops. "D-Dauntless?"

"Yes," he says. "There were four scenarios in the aptitude test. Taking the knife and killing the dog ruled out Erudite and Amity. If you were Amity, the knife and killing the dog would never be an option. If you were Erudite, you wouldn't have killed the dog; you would have knelt on the floor to calm it down. Thus, the first test showed you had aptitude for Dauntless."

"Telling Alfred about knowing the man's identity ruled out Abnegation; if you were Abnegation, you'd lie to protect the unknown man. Telling Alfred the truth, however, showed you had aptitude for Candor. On the beach, choosing water over companionship and attacking Vincent showed aptitude for Dauntless. And letting the Amity girl die in place of your father ruled out Candor completely. Thus, your strongest aptitude is Dauntless. I must add, however, you were close to getting Candor, but Dauntless is still the stronger aptitude."

"So I must transfer?" I ask.

"It's up to you. You can stay in Candor if you wish. However, I'm not going to tell you what you want to do. It's up to you, as I said," the Erudite man says.

"Thank you. I think I know what I'll do," I say, getting off the chair. "Thank you, Mr...?"

"Clinton. Daniel Clinton," he says, shaking my hand.

* * *

"Well?" my dad asks as we sit at the dinner table later that night.

The two of us are the only occupants of our house in the Merciless Mart, Candor Headquarters.

I swallow a mouthful of rice. "I had strong aptitude for..."

I am about to say Dauntless, but I catch myself. I lied to Alfred in my aptitude test. It may not have been real, but my subconscious made that choice, meaning I wasn't all black-and-white Candor as I thought I'd been.

If I told the truth to my father that I'd gotten Dauntless, I'd only be reinforcing the idea that I was Candor. If I lied and said I'd gotten Candor, it meant that I was continuing to betray my rules of life, the rules that had been nurtured in me after growing up in Candor.

Choosing Day was less than 24 hours away, and I was torn.

"Well?" my father prompts. "Don't lie!" he adds.

"I...I got Candor," I lie.

My first, real lie, if the one in the test wasn't counted.

My father nods, satisfied. "So you know what you'll pick tomorrow."

I eat another mouthful of dinner, but my appetite is gone. I'd lied, again. If I ever needed more proof that I was not as Candor as I'd believed previously, there it was.

I'd decided. Tomorrow, I was going to choose Dauntless.

On the bright side, at least Candor and Dauntless aren't enemies.


	2. Honesty and Bravery

It's Choosing Day. Butterflies make their appearance in my stomach even before I'm out of my house.

My hand quivers lightly as I ladle up a spoonful of cornflakes into my mouth. I can't even enjoy the flavor of the meal; which sucks, considering it could very well be my last breakfast here in Candor.

My father's left the house already, gone to do his job. He's a member of the Council in Candor; he helps Alfred make decisions and whatnot. He'll be helping his colleagues set up the Choosing Bowls for today; Choosing Day will take place in Candor this time.

Since we all left school early yesterday, I never got the chance to meet up with my friends after our respective aptitude tests. I see Maurice standing down the corridor from my flat as I shut the door behind me and rush over to him.

"Hey," I greet as we begin walking down the hallway in the direction of the auditorium; the room in my test where I let Alfred electrocute the girl from Amity. That's where I, and the other sixteen year-olds, will make our decision: to stay in our birth factions or to transfer somewhere else. It seems only fitting that I should make that decision in that same room; because it was also in that same room, in my test, that I made the decision that proved I had a strong aptitude for Dauntless. Today, I will confirm it.

Maurice nods at me. "Hey."

We follow the familiar route down to the auditorium. I've walked these paths many times; we always come to the auditorium anytime Alfred has to make announcements that directly involves all of us from Candor. Other than that, I've heard the auditorium's also used for private meetings, in which Alfred speaks and discusses administrative matters with the Council; the Council that my father is part of.

Maurice and I follow the black and white tiles on the floor. I look down at them, remembering how black and white always felt like home to me. But now that I know I can't speak and comprehend the truth as black and white as I'd believed, it all feels false, an illusion.

Nikolai and Dmitri catch up with us as we join the other sixteen year-olds standing in the room. The five factions sit in rows of seats arranged in concentric circles, so everyone is gathered around the middle of the room, where the five Choosing Bowls sit, so normal and ordinary and yet part of a life-changing situation.

Five bowls; gray stones for Abnegation, water for Erudite, earth for Amity, coals for Dauntless and glass for Candor.

The four of us take our places standing in front of our faction; several Candor family members sit in their seats, watching us. Of course, my father is not here; he will arrive later when Alfred comes to give the speech on the factions. I spot Nikolai's mother and elder sister, along with Maurice's grandmother. Dmitri's parents both work on the Council; they are not here.

We arrange ourselves in reversed alphabetical order, effectively making me the very first person to go forward.

Great. I can set the bar for the rest of my Candor buddies.

Just great.

* * *

"Our dependents are now sixteen and are close to reaching adulthood. It is now up to them to decide what kind of people they will be," Alfred reads off the written speech, speaking into a microphone, addressing all the people gathered in the room.

The place is silent; family members and nervous sixteen year-olds watching and listening to Alfred with rapt attention.

I see my father now, sitting up with the rest of Candor, next to Dmitri's mother and father.

"Humanity divided themselves into five factions that sought to eradicate the qualities that they believed to be responsible for the world's current state of disarray," Alfred continued. "Those who blamed aggression formed Amity."

The Amity smile at each other; family members and sixteen year-olds alike. Even though I'm considering switching to Dauntless, my dislike for Amity still stands. I don't trust that they would be so peaceful, so kind and polite all the time; they hide secrets from everyone, hidden under smiling faces and lies told for the sake of goodwill. They could be wolves in sheep's clothing and no one is any the wiser.

"Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite."

The Erudite. People who can't get their noses out of their books to admire the world around them and all its endless possibilities. All so caught up in their endless pursuit of knowledge and yet friendless, soulless, with no real satisfaction in their work as they will have no one to share their knowledge with. While Candor's biggest enemy is Amity, I, personally, have always thought the Erudite to be a dry and lifeless faction. Even Amity is livelier than them. The Erudite is only less lifeless than Abnegation.

"Those who blamed duplicity created Candor."

Several of the Candor sixteen year-olds throw their chests out, proud for this moment. I don't; I am less than minutes away from abandoning my white coat forever.

I'm not an idiot, I know Candor is one of the least popular factions because they claim we can't control what we say.

Do I have to learn to control what I say if I am to become Dauntless, or will that part of me never really fade away?

"Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation."

Selfless to the point that they lose self-preservation, to the point that they don't care about themselves or their own lives. They would be willing to die for people they don't know; it's not just puzzling, it's disgusting.

"And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless."

My test said I was one of them, or at least, would fit in best with one of them. I trust what the test says, but can I fit into Dauntless? Am I, so to speak, Dauntless enough to be in Dauntless? I think back to every defining moment in my life; have I ever really shown much courage or bravery?

It's often said that it takes courage to be honest. With that reasoning, Candor is probably the faction that most closely resembles Dauntless.

I try and picture myself running onto a train in dark clothing. Not only is the image absurd, I feel the butterflies in my stomach quicken.

I've never liked trains; I was terrified of moving at fast speeds.

"Working together, our five factions have contributed to a different sector of society. Abnegation has worked in the government, Candor has provided trustworthy lawyers, Erudite with intelligent teachers, scientists and researchers, Amity with understanding counselors and caretakers and Dauntless protects the city from internal and external threats," Alfred says. "It is within our faction that each and every one of us can find meaning, purpose and life."

Faction before blood. The old motto. If I leave, my father will be all alone. Can I really do that to him?

"Therefore this day shall mark a happy occasion on which we will receive our new initiates, who will work hand in hand with us towards a better society and a better world," Alfred concludes. "And with that, let us begin the Choosing Ceremony."

I watch, with sweaty palms and a beating heart, as one by one, the sixteen year-olds make their way forward. They start off with Abnegation, then Amity, followed by Candor.

"Markus Woodley."

I bite my lip and step forward. The Abnegation and Amity girls; Patricia Zen and Cindy Wilkins, both stayed with their factions. If I am to do this, I will be the first faction transfer.

Alfred hands me a knife. I look into his eyes, remembering them from the test. He smiles at me in encouragement, then takes a step back as I survey the five bowls.

I put the tip of the knife at the palm of my hand and exhale smoothly as I draw it across. I wasn't afraid of the pain; was that a sign that I was Dauntless?

Candor glass is to my right; Dauntless coals on my left. I decide; if I hold my hand out over the glass, I'd be a coward, to not have gone with the daring option, the one the test had advised me to pick. If I held my hand over the coals, would it not have taken bravery in the first place to have done so? Whichever faction I choose now will ultimately define me as a person, even before I commence initiation.

I inhale and exhale again, holding out my arm and slowly moving it to the left. I bite my lip again; an old habit of nervousness; as my blood drips once, twice, thrice onto the sizzling coals.

* * *

I move to sit with the Dauntless; the first two benches are empty, meant for both Dauntless-born initiates and Dauntless transfers.

I hear murmuring around me over my choice, though rather softly. A Candor transferring to Dauntless isn't uncommon; it's Amity and Abnegation transfers that attract the most attention. However, I know Maurice, Dmitri and Nikolai will be reeling from my choice; my father too.

Alfred himself looks slightly surprised; a member of his precious Candor Council losing his son to Dauntless.

More and more people step forward to choose. While they pick, I let my eyes wander up to my father. I blink, realizing his seat is empty. He must have left after I abandoned him and abandoned Candor. He now knows I'd lied last night; I'd already abandoned him and Candor back then.

"Nikolai Tyler."

I watch as Nikolai steps out of the crowd. He slits his palm and holds it out. I watch as his blood drips...into water.

He has transferred too. My eyes follow him as he makes his way to join the Erudite, face impassive.

"Maurice Thorn."

Maurice is up next; he winces as he draws the blade over his palm. He exhales slowly and squeezes the blood out; they drip onto glass.

He has chosen to stay. He doesn't meet my eyes as he heads up into the pews to sit with the other Candor-born and transferred initiates.

"Dmitri Nile."

It's Dmitri's turn. I grip the edge of my seat, nervous, watching as he holds out his hand. His blood drips and lands into water.

He has joined Erudite; joined his friend, Nikolai.

I watch as he leaves as well, abandoning Candor. I guess all four of us hid secrets from each other; Maurice was the only true black and white Candor in our group.

The names fly by me. I watch as more Dauntless-born fill the seats next to me. Nearing the end of the ceremony, there are a total of ten Dauntless-born thus far, along with eight other transfers; one Amity, two Abnegation, three Erudite and two other Candor boys - Vincent and one of his friends, Robert.

"Hey Mark," he greets as he and Robert walk over to sit with the other Dauntless.

I nod at him but don't say anything more. He and I were never friends; even now that we're in the same transferred faction, we won't be. I still remember how satisfying it felt to knock him out in my test. I shudder to think what he and Robert will get up to in Dauntless; even when still in Candor, the pair were known for being bad news.

"Hey."

I turn around, expecting Vincent again, but this time, it's one of the Dauntless-born initiates; a girl.

She has short black hair with green and pink streaks, pale skin, brown eyes and was dressed in a short, sleeveless black shirt, skinny black jeans and combat boots.

I open my mouth to greet her but the roar of the cheering Dauntless stops me in my tracks. The last Dauntless-born initiate is joining us; we have eleven Dauntless-born and nine transfers: one Amity, two Abnegation, and three Erudite and Candor each.

"Hey," I greet her.

She sits down next to me. "What's your name?"

"Markus," I tell her. "You?"

"Brooklyn," she smiles, extending a hand to me, which I shake tentatively, unsure what to make of her.

She turns her head slightly as Alfred begins his closing speech. I spot something black on her neck; a tattoo. Will I have to get tattoos as part of my initiation? I never used to like tattoos; they, like smoking, which is common in Candor, just put me off. But tattoos are, at least, different from smoking in that they don't have any ill effect on my health. If they can prove that I am different and can be part of Candor, what's the harm?

"It was pretty brave of you to transfer," Brooklyn says.

She sees me looking at her tattoo and turns her head so I can see it in full view; it's a black butterfly.

"Nice tattoo. What if people think it looks ugly?" I ask.

"I can handle myself," she says. "You, on the other hand, should probably watch what you say in case you offend the wrong person by voicing out your thoughts. I know freedom of speech is normal in Candor, but you should probably watch your mouth around the stricter instructors in Dauntless."

"Why would you help me?" I ask.

She shrugs, smiling. "Might as well help out a fellow initiate. I'm serious, though. Many a Candor transfer's suffered during Dauntless initiation because he or she was running their mouth off. My older brother's told me the tales. He's one of the instructors."

"Really? Doesn't that mean you get an unfair advantage during initiation, if one of the instructors is related to you by blood?" I ask her.

"There you go again, speaking tactlessly. You may have been a bit forward when saying that, but you do speak the truth," she says, smirking. "Don't worry. My brother's the impassive sort of person. He's not one to submit to personal bias. And, honestly, being factionless doesn't really frighten me."

The crowd of Dauntless gets to their feet and begin leading us out of the auditorium. I move to follow them, Brooklyn walking with me.

"So, how did you parents react when you transferred?" she asks.

"Parent," I correct her. "And my dad left without a word."

"Oh." She scratches her head. "Well, there's always Visiting Day. Maybe he'll get over his anger and visit you then."

Once the Dauntless are out of the Merciless Mart, without any warning, everyone starts running. Whoops and shouts of laughter fill the air as they run from Candor Headquarters.

I cast one last look back at the place I used to call home before turning back around and running to keep up, the other transfers running along with me, looking just as confused. Brooklyn, who has done this sort of thing her whole life, backpedals, keeping an eye on me as she keeps up with the crowd easily.

"Where are we running to?" I call out to her.

"Train!" she yells back.

Sure enough, I hear the telltale train horn sounding in the distance. I swallow, realizing what happens next.

"We have to hop into that thing?" one of the Erudite blurts out, looking worried.

"It's Dauntless practice!" Brooklyn calls out to him over the howl of the wind and the blare of the train horn. "You're all going to have to get used to it!"

The train chugs into view. The rest of Dauntless begin running forward and hopping in, leaping through open doors into empty carriages without a break in pace.

"Come on, Markus!" Brooklyn cheers.

She takes a few steps back, and then leaps. I watch as her body flies through the air and she lands on her feet inside an empty carriage.

I rush after her, the other transfers trying to keep pace with the train.

"Don't think. Just jump!" Brooklyn encourages.

"Oh, man," I whimper to myself.

Behind me, I see some of the other transfers jumping into the train. Soon, it's just me and the last Erudite boy.

"Come on!" Brooklyn yells.

Bracing myself, I leap sideways and tumble into the nearest carriage, my legs hanging out over the edge. Grunting, I pull myself in completely and lie on the ground, panting heavily from having to keep up with the train.

"NO!"

I hear the Erudite boy's shout. I raise my head just in time to see the train pull away from him, leaving him far behind.

"Chris!" one of the two remaining Erudite girls cry out, but the Erudite boy has faded out of sight; the train's too far ahead.

"There's always at least one poor sop who doesn't even make it to the compound, even before initiation starts," one of the older Dauntless-borns says.

"What's going to happen to him?" I hear one of the Stiffs ask.

"He's now part of the factionless. That's going to happen to all those who fail initiation as well, so you better work hard, wouldn't you say, Stiff?" the Dauntless-born replies.

Just like that, the transfers' numbers are down by one. We have been reduced to eight.

Brooklyn's face comes into view and she helps me up to my feet. "Are you alright?"

I gulp, putting a hand on a wall to steady myself. "I'm...I'm fine...I just..."

I lean against the wall of the carriage, the movement of the train matching my heart rate. I look out the open doorway; the scenery outside flashes by speedily. I gulp again, clenching my eyes shut as a wave of dizziness makes my head swim. "Sorry...I...I don't do too well with fast speeds..."

"You? You're afraid of speed? Why'd you transfer to Dauntless then if you're scared of that?" I hear a girl ask cuttingly.

I look up, expecting to see one of the Dauntless-born, being confident of her abilities being better than the transfers as usual; instead, it's a transfer. I recognize the facial features of the girl from Amity Maurice insulted yesterday; I hadn't realized she'd been the Amity transfer until I got a good look at her face.

"Everyone has fears," I mutter.

"I thought you Candor were above that, just like you're above everything and everyone else," she remarks.

"That's not true," I protest.

"Actually, the statistics do show that more than 75% of the people who were brought up in Candor suffer from superiority complex, thanks to their entitlement to the freedom of being able to say and act the way they want for majority of their lives," one of the Erudite girls - the one who isn't crying over Chris - speaks up.

"Well, we're not Candor anymore. Now, we're all Dauntless," Robert cuts the Erudite girl across.

"Not yet, you're not," the same Dauntless-born who'd replied to the Stiff says to Robert. "If you don't pass initiation, you're just an initiate and nothing more."

"And what makes you think we won't pass initiation?" Vincent asks. "Our test results all showed we had higher aptitude for Dauntless; I think that's a plus point in our favor."

"Oh really? Tell that to your friend, Chris," the Dauntless-born says snidely.

"It's always possible Chris didn't get Dauntless for his test. He could have chosen Dauntless against the results that the test had given him," the same Erudite girl says.

"Well, I'll guess none of us will ever know, will we?" the Dauntless-born says, smirking.

"Drop it, Miles. You're being an idiot again," Brooklyn says, looking irritated.

Miles shrugs. "I'm just pulling a Candor and stating the truth."

"Look!"

I look out the door and see, to my horror, that the train is fast approaching a series of rooftops.

"What now?" I ask Brooklyn.

"Now..." she breathes. "We jump."


	3. The Dauntless Compound

"Jump? Are you crazy?" the Erudite girl - who'd been so devastated over Chris - blurts out. "That's mental!"

"You saw what happened to Chris. You want that to happen to you too?" Miles threatens. "Just jump. You won't die, unless you miss the ledge."

With that, as the roof draws nearer, Miles takes his position near the doorway, bracing himself to jump.

"You're not scared of heights too, are you?" Brooklyn asks me.

"No," I say. "But that doesn't make it any easier."

The train pulls up alongside the roof and keeps going. Initiates and transfers alike begin to leap out of the train - some of them holding hands, others going one-by-one. Miles lets out a whoop of exhilaration and leaps out, disappearing from sight. The Amity girl smooths back her hair and grins before she jumps out too.

"You can do it. You're a Dauntless boy now, aren't you?" Brooklyn says to me encouragingly. "Come on. We'll jump together."

At that moment, Vincent and Robert jump out too, together. The Erudite girls clutch onto each other. The one who'd been crying over Chris clutches her glasses fearfully before the two of them leap out in unison.

The two Stiffs are left. I realize one of them is Katrina, who I met briefly before the Aptitude test. _People I've only just met are now just popping up all over the place, aren't they?_ I thought to myself. _The Amity girl, Katrina..._

"Come on! No sense in faltering now! We have to go!" Brooklyn insists.

Nodding, I get behind her. She offers me her hand and, after a pause, I take it. Squeezing it for support, I nod one more time and together, we jump out of the train.

I feel my feet leave the floor and for a moment, we hang, suspended, in mid-air. The rooftop looms up towards me and I bend my knees just as I slam into the roof.

I barely manage to avoid rolling right back off the ledge and for a second, I lay there, panting. Now that the fear is gone, excitement is all that remains, coursing through my veins.

"Now, Frank!"

I look up just in time to see the two Stiffs jump from the train as well - Katrina and Frank holding hands. We all made it off the train. All eight initiates. I breathe a sigh of relief. Perhaps there won't be another 'Chris' incident like last time.

Brooklyn helps me to my feet. "You alright?"

"Actually, yeah. I feel fine," I say. "Once the initial fright is gone, I actually started to enjoy that."

"Hmph. Well, come on," she says.

She beckons me to follow and we join the other initiates at the other edge of the roof. There, everyone is crowded around a tall, dark-skinned bald man, who stands at the ledge, waiting for us all to gather. Satisfied, he opens his mouth and begins to speak in a gruff, commanding voice.

"Welcome, initiates. My name is Freeman, and I'll be one of your many instructors during Dauntless initiation. In a few minutes, you'll all be entering the Dauntless compound and be shown to your living quarters, and the details of initiation will be explained to you by my colleagues and I. But before that, you're going to have to get into the compound."

Freeman gestures behind him, to the wide open space hanging across the edge of the roof. "The Dauntless compound is just behind me. All you need to do is get down there."

There is a moment of hesitation as people ponder his words.

"Wait, are you suggesting...are you saying we have to jump? Again?" one Erudite girl splutters, sounding disbelieving.

"Perhaps," Freeman says, folding his arms. "Does this pose much of a challenge to you? Would you perhaps like to take the stairs? How about I give you a nice little lollipop too for walking down on your own without me showing you the way?"

There is a moment of stunned silence. "We don't have all day, initiates. Would one of you idiots please get this over with?" Freeman asks.

"I'll do it!"

The Amity girl steps out of the crowd, looking thoroughly disgruntled. She steps up to the edge of the roof as everyone gives her a wide berth. Holding out her arms, like she's about to take flight, we all hear her take a deep breath before she leans forward and pitches over the edge. There's no screaming or shrieking to be heard. There isn't the sound of a crash. She just...tumbles over. Silently. There's no sound or indication as to whether she survived or if she's lying at the bottom of the ground in a bloody mess.

Freeman looks over the edge, before turning back to us. "She's done. Who's next?"

Vincent puffs out his chest. "I'll g-"

"Me first, transfer," Miles says, pushing past him.

Vincent flushes red in anger as Miles takes his position on the edge of the roof. The Dauntless-borns are chattering amongst themselves.

"Go, Miles!" one of them cries out and Miles turns back to shoot them a confident smile and a thumbs-up.

"Hey! I'm going too!" Vincent insists, stepping back out of the crowd. "We can go together!"

"Not if I go first," Miles snaps.

He takes a little jump and flies off the edge. Vincent rushes over to the edge and peers down.

"There's a hole," he reports back to the rest of us. "There's a hole in the ground."

"Next!" Freeman barks.

Vincent goes next, then Robert, and the Dauntless-borns start volunteering one after another. The numbers begin trickling down. Before Brooklyn goes, she gives me a wink. "Don't wait too long, Markus." Then she falls and is gone.

I step up next, determined not to be the last one on the roof. There's only three Dauntless-borns left, along with Frank the Stiff and the Nose who'd cried over Chris.

Taking my position on the ledge, I see Vincent wasn't lying. There's a wide gaping hole in the ground that seemingly leads down into nothingness. It's black as far as I can see; pitch black. Perhaps all those who jumped really are lying down in that hole, dead, in a bloody mess of flesh and pulp. Maybe there's water at the bottom. Or an inflatable bounce-house. I miss those.

This jump doesn't terrify me as much as the one on the train did. I'd always had a bit of a minor phobia of fast speeds. But now, I was standing on firm ground and only had to take one step off to reach the compound. I could do this. It wouldn't be as tough.

Taking a deep breath, I prepare to step off when I feel hands push me from behind.

Yelping, I trip and caught completely unaware, I begin falling. The wind whistles through my ears and the gaping hole looms up ahead of me. The ground swallows me up and I only fall a short distance more before I land onto something.

Rope.

It's a rope net.

I lay on my back for a while, looking up at the sky. I see the shape of a head sticking out from where the rooftop once was - whoever pushed me was looking down.

"Get up, initiate."

I turn around to see a young woman standing by the edge of the rope net, holding out a hand to pull me off the net. I grab it and she lifts me out easily, as if I was no heavier than a pillow.

"Name?" she asks.

"Markus Woodley," I answer.

She announces my name, saying I am the 13th jumper. Unlucky? I don't know. As a Candor, I never really believed in superstition. There were just so many false ones in the world out there that no one knew what to believe in anymore.

The next person flies down and lands, entangled in the rope net. The woman helps Frank out and he stumbles over next to me.

"Did you push me?" I ask.

"What? Oh, no, it wasn't me," he says evasively.

"Who was it then?" I ask.

"One of the Dauntless-borns. I don't know. He probably thought it was funny. And besides, many people have grudges against the Candor," Frank says, looking at me apologetically.

"I'm not Candor anymore," is my reply.

*

When all the initiates have dropped onto the net like stones, I rejoin my group of initiates. Frank stands next to me and points out one of the Dauntless-borns.

"That's the guy who pushed you," he says.

The boy Frank points out has choppy, chestnut hair, a regal-seeming expression plastered on his face and hawk-like features. His eyes meet mine and glint with cruel amusement. Smiling teasingly at me, he waves in my direction. I don't wave back.

"Alright, gather around, monkeys."

I turn to see Freeman gliding over towards us, the woman who'd pulled me out of the net next to him.

"We're going to split you guys into two groups. Dauntless-borns follow me. Initiates follow Ila over here. Your respective instructors will explain the process of initiation over to you, and in the case of the faction transfers, they will also give you guys a complementary tour of our compound," Freeman says.

"Transfers, with me!" Ila calls out and meekly, the rest of us peel away from the crowd to join her.

"See you later," Brooklyn whispers to me and I nod at her.

*

Ila leads us around the compound, showing us locations like the "Pit", the heart of the Dauntless compound where most of the faction activities take place. She also shows us the tattoo parlor, a place she says almost every Dauntless visits during initiation, advising us to think about getting a tattoo as well, as if to show that we belong to Dauntless now.

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea. Most Candor are actually pretty receptive to vices. My father smokes; Alfred's known as a heavy drinker; Maurice's uncle was once a druggie - I think it's almost a bit of a joke, that Candor are always the ones getting involved in addictions and vices. I, for one, have always found smoking repulsive, and drugs a foolish choice. Yet, the idea of a tattoo sounds...thrilling. I might have thought it dumb before, but now that I'm in Dauntless, the idea appeals to me. Perhaps I should get one.

"And this is the Chasm," Ila says, leading us across the walkway, pointing down at the raging river below.

I take one look at the water crashing against the sharp rocks and feel my confidence falter.

"The purpose of the Chasm is to serve as a reminder: that there's a fine line between bravery and idiocy," Ila says. "People have fallen down there before, and they've been dashed against the rocks. Some jump on purpose. Others, by accident, or as punishment. I suggest you all be careful around this area."

"It's a long way down," Katrina remarks, peering down into the water.

"Exactly, so if I were you, I'd best watch my step," Ila warns and she leads on.

*

"These here will be where you sleep," Ila says.

She opens the door and leads the eight of us into a co-ed dormitory. There are a total of nine beds. The Nose who'd been crying over Chris - and is still sniffling every few minutes - chokes up as she counts them and buries her face in the other Nose's shoulder.

"Oh, would you stop crying already? It's not like your boyfriend died or anything, so would you just quit your sniffling?" the Amity girl snaps at her.

The other Erudite girl shoots a glare at her, but the one crying over Chris casts the Amity girl a teary look. "Chris wasn't my boyfriend, he was my brother. He was only a few months older than me. We'd agreed to go to Dauntless together. And I know he'd rather be factionless than dead."

"That's stupid. Why better factionless than dead? I'd rather be alive and humiliated than dead but with dignity. What use is dignity if we're buried five feet under the ground?" Vincent asks out loud.

"Perhaps dignity is of no use to you since you don't have a spot of dignity in the first place," the other Nose snaps at him.

Vincent opens his mouth to retort but Robert shushes him. Ila is tapping the floor with her foot, looking impatient. "Are we quite finished here? If so, then let's carry on with the tour. Anyway, this is the dormitory where all of you shall sleep. You are free to choose your own beds. The first stage of initiation begins tomorrow."

She crosses her arms, clearing her throat. "Initiation is split into three stages. Stage One is physical - you'll be participating in fights against each other. Luckily, there's an even number of you so it should be easy to pair you guys off. Stage Two and Three are mental - and their details shall remain confidential until Stage One is completed. Just know that by the end of Stage One, three initiates will be cut."

"What?" I blurt out.

"You heard me," Ila says coolly. "If you don't get in a good ranking in Stage One, you'll be cut off from the list of initiates. You'll be booted from this compound and be made to live factionless."

She smiles coldly. "Just like our dear Chris. So, how about you guys not mess it up?"

*

When it's dinner time, I'm sitting at a lone table, on my own, eating from a plate of salmon steak and beef stew, when Brooklyn slides into the seat across from mine.

"Hey," she greets warmly.

"Hey," I say.

"So, how's your first day of initiation going?" she asks. "Everything you were expecting?"

I wave a hand to indicate the others. The people in the Pit are rowdy. Many are chatting with each other at the top of their voices as they eat. Food is even flying around on a couple instances. I watch as the Dauntless-born - who Frank said had pushed me off the roof - slams his friend's face into a plate of pie, much to both of their amusement.

"It's not Candor, that's for sure," I say.

"I don't know about that. After all, doesn't it take bravery to be honest?" she asks, her eyes glinting.

"By the way, I heard about how Brett pushed you off the roof. I apologize on his behalf. He can be such a jerk sometimes," Brooklyn says.

"It's okay. I'll just have to get used to it," I say.

"That's the spirit, Mark. See? You'll fit in fine," she says encouragingly.

"What if I don't make it past initiation though?" I point out. "Three of us are going to get cut by the end of Stage One."

"That includes the Dauntless-born too," she says. "There are ten Dauntless-born, including yours truly, and eight of you initiates. Three of the eighteen of us will get cut. As long as you stay in a high ranking, I'm sure you'll be fine."

"Doesn't that give you an unfair advantage, though?" I accuse. "You and Miles and Brett and all your little Dauntless-born friends have trained for this all your lives."

"That's just Stage One. Stages Two and Three, we've never trained for," she says.

"Stage One is the stage where people get cut," I say.

"So's Stage Three. Optimism is key, Markus," she says, tapping her temple knowingly as she gets up to leave.

*

I step out of the showers, one hand still clutching a towel and drying my hair. I head into the dormitory, moving towards the bed I'd chosen, when I hear sniffling coming from the corner. Dinner's still ongoing and most of the others are still chowing down. I turn to see Chris's sister huddled in between two beds, rocking back and forth, her knees brought up to her chest.

"Are you alright?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

She sniffs. "No."

"Where's your friend? She ditched you?" I ask blatantly.

She shakes her head. "She's...well, she's in the bathroom."

"I didn't see her," I say.

"She's in the girls' room, you dunce," she snaps at me.

I raise my hands, as if in a gesture of surrender. "Fine. Excuse me for just trying to start a conversation."

"Why would I want to start a conversation with you? Candor like you, you'd probably go spouting every word I say to those loudmouth buddies of yours," she spits.

"Firstly, Robert and Vincent are just as much my friends as they are yours. Secondly, I'm not Candor anymore, and neither are they. And come to think of it, you aren't either. You're Dauntless now. You'll have to get over Chris," I say. "What would your brother say if he saw you like this?"

She glares at me. "You could've helped him."

"What? That seems like a weird thing for him to say-"

"No. I mean back when we were running, to catch up to the train. You and him were the last two. You could have grabbed his arm, helped him get on, but you cared only for yourself," she accuses. "You claim to no longer be a Candor, but you think only of yourself."

"Well, yeah. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a Stiff," I say. "And I was trying to be nice to you, but I see you're a piece of work, huh?"

"I _am_ Dauntless, after all. It's not exactly sunshine and rainbows here, you know," she points out, still sniffling.

The door opens and the other Nose comes in. She takes one look at her friend and lets out a gasp. "Bonnie, don't tell me you're still crying! Come on, you've got to let Chris go! He wouldn't want you to beat yourself up over this!"

Bonnie sniffs, and I roll my eyes, giving up on the Erudite altogether.


	4. Guns, Fists and Initiates

"Today, you'll all be learning how to handle firearms. That is, learning how to use and operate a working gun," Ila barks out to us.

The eight of us stand atop one of the roofs again. Target boards are set up across the area, and we all stand behind one table each. Laid out on each table is a black gun and a small box of ammunition.

I rub the morning sleepiness out of my eyes. I was never a morning person, and the Dauntless seem like a bunch of people who could stay awake all night and still be energetic the next morning. I'll have to get used to that.

"The purpose of learning how to use a gun is simple: to defend yourself. And as a Dauntless, it's not just yourself you'll need to learn how to defend. If you want to become a member of Dauntless, you might be taking up jobs defending the whole city. Guns are a necessity. You need to learn how to defend yourself in an emergency," Ila explains.

Ila motions to us, showing us the proper way to grip the gun. "Don't go waving this thing around with your finger on the trigger unless you intend to kill anyone," she warns. "Again, there's a fine line between bravery and idiocy. While we here in Dauntless are a lot more...flexible with our constraints on how initiates treat each other, we don't want to lose good Dauntless initiates because a careless one can't resist waving a dangerous weapon around like a baboon."

She lines up her own gun with the target. "You guys should adopt the following posture. Feet apart, arms outstretched. Look down your sights, take a deep breath and fire. Got it?"

We all begin following her example. The first few attempts are plenty disastrous for almost everyone.

Vincent fires first and his bullet doesn't get close to the target. Robert is next and the result is the same, much to both boys' frustration. Frank - standing on my left - is holding his gun awkwardly, straining to pull the trigger and to keep his arms outstretched at the same time. When he finally does manage to fire, he lets out a strangled cry as he does so and his bullet somehow zips in the wrong direction, nicking the edge of my target instead. Don't even ask me how.

Lisa - Bonnie's friend - yelps when she makes her first shot, dropping the gun when it kicks from the recoil. It drops back onto the table and Lisa covers her ears, shuddering. The bullet goes flying off into the distance, far from the target.

Even the Amity girl - Alyssa, her name is - isn't performing too well. For all her bravado the previous day, I would've thought her confidence would propel her to an early lead, but evidently not, as her bullet goes sailing high up and over her target.

Surprisingly, the only person to successfully hit her target as instructed, is none other than Bonnie. Looking a lot less grief-stricken as she had been yesterday, she continues firing without sparing anyone else a second glance and she hits the middle circle on her third try.

The sound of gunshots rise up into the air. More and more people begin hitting their targets after Bonnie's first victory. After wasting almost a dozen bullets, I finally nick the edge of my target. It's a start, at least.

*

Ila dismisses us and the whole lot of us head down for lunch. I load my plate with a generous helping of shepherd's pie and look around for an available place to sit. I don't see Brooklyn anywhere, and every table has at least a few people sitting around it, so I'll have to sit with someone regardless.

I feel so...alone here in Dauntless. Like I don't really fit in. Even with the initiates. The Noses - Lisa and Bonnie - have each other. The Stiffs - Katrina and Frank - have each other. Vincent and Robert have each other. And the most un-Amity like girl I've ever met, Alyssa, is sitting with Miles and a few of his Dauntless-born buddies.

Brooklyn's technically my only friend, but even so, she and I won't be seeing much of each other for Stage One.

I make my way to the table closest to me, the one occupied by Katrina and Frank.

"Mind if I sit with you guys? Everywhere else is full," I begin.

"Oh, sure. You may," Frank says hurriedly, moving aside to give me a seat.

Before I can do so, Katrina rolls her eyes and tuts loudly. "Frank, you're not Abnegation anymore. You don't have to be such a saint. Besides, this guy's not exactly good news. You know how the Candor are."

"So Frank's not a Stiff anymore, but I'm still a Candor?" I ask, taking my seat anyway. "Look, can we not have to bring our petty past factions into this? I'm no more a Candor than either of you two now."

"Depends on how you look at it," Katrina says coolly. "Seems to me like you're not one to change. Why don't you go sit with your Candor buddies?"

She points over my shoulder, to where Vincent and Robert are sitting at their own table, laughing and chattering.

"They're not my buddies," I laugh humorlessly. "We don't get along."

"Neither should we," Katrina says.

"Give the guy a break, Katrina. He doesn't seem so bad, at least, compared to those other two," Frank says.

I shoot him a grateful look as Katrina sighs and shrugs, conceding defeat.

"Did you ever get back to the guy who pushed you?" Frank asks me.

"No," I reply. "His name's Brett."

"Someone pushed you?" Katrina asks.

"Off the roof. Probably thought it was funny to pick on an ex-Candor," I say.

"He's not the only one," Katrina says.

"I'm almost kind of glad to be ditching my white-colored Candor clothes for black Dauntless ones," I say, tugging on my shirt.

"It feels strange to be wearing different faction colors for a change," Frank says. "I always found grey...so dull."

"Must feel liberating, doesn't it? To not be controlled or restrained anymore," I say to Frank. "You Stiffs couldn't even look at your reflections, could you? That's just...sad."

I half-expect Frank to get mad, but he nods. "It kind of...was. I think I just left Abnegation because I couldn't stand one more second of being in that faction. It was just so...stifling. I couldn't take it anymore, having to always be the selfless one."

"Did you get Dauntless as an aptitude test result then?" I ask.

"Yes," he says. "Even though I picked the cheese up when faced with the dog."

"You picked up the cheese? How'd you get Dauntless then if you didn't kill the dog?" I ask.

"I _did_ kill the dog," he says. "When it ran at me, I just dropped the cheese and grabbed it in mid-air. Then I wrapped my arms around its neck and just...squeezed."

He mimics strangling the dog and Katrina shudders. Frank waves his beefy arms around, looking sheepish. "I guess my brute strength won out. I didn't even consider using the cheese to calm the dog down. I just attacked it."

"I never thought someone who didn't pick the knife would still get Dauntless as a result," Katrina says.

"You picked the knife then?" I ask.

She nods. "No hesitation."

At this, she fidgets slightly. "I'll be honest...there was this one part in my aptitude test where I had to kill someone. It was your friend. The guy who told me and Mary to shut up before our test began."

I blink, thinking back to the events of that day and, for some reason, I burst out laughing. "No way. You had to kill Maurice?"

"Well, yeah. And let me tell you, it was satisfying. Typical Candor," she says. "Even after his simulation was 'dead', I just kept stabbing him over and over again."

Frank recoils, looking slightly appalled. "Damn, Katrina. I knew you were a bit of a wildfire, but that's just plain sadism."

"So maybe now you can understand my hate of the Candor," she says, looking at me as she spoons another mouthful of her apple pie. "Don't go thinking it's just me, though. Plenty of the other transfers don't like the Candor. It's probably the most hated faction of the five. If you want to get in good with the others, you've got your work cut out for you."

I think back to Alyssa's attitude towards me on the train ride here, and Bonnie's words to me the night before, as well as Brett pushing me off the roof. "Yeah, I see what you mean."

*

After lunch, we all gather in the Training Room. Ila stands before us. Behind her is a blackboard, turned on its side so that we can't see what's written on it.

"This is Stage One," she announces. "You will all be learning how to fight. For the rest of the week, each of you will fight against another opponent, and you will be ranked according to how many victories you score as well as how many times you lose a fight. Winning a fight against a stronger opponent will raise you ranking; losing to a weaker one will lower it. Your ranking will determine where you stand among the eight of you. If you get an extremely low ranking, you risk being cut from the group, and if you get cut, you're factionless. Got it?"

For the rest of the lesson, she shows us moves and methods on fighting, having us practice our punching on training dummies. I watch as Vincent pummels his own training dummy to the ground, swinging a giant fist into his dummy with an extraordinary amount of brute force. Robert, who is skinner than his broad-shouldered friend, is making agility his forte, striking and jabbing the dummy with lightning-fast reflexes.

Lisa is on my right, and she feebly punches at her training dummy, which does not seem to be moving much. Bonnie, on my left, is slamming into it with as much strength as she can muster, but she's the smallest one of the eight of us, so that doesn't seem to be her forte.

Frank, to his credit, is doing a lot of damage to his dummy. He just needs to swing those meaty fists of his and the dummy teeters back and forth with each of his blows. On his left, Katrina attacks the dummy methodically, targeting the dummy's weak points and landing sharp, precise blows on it.

And opposite me, Alyssa is raining attacks down on her dummy, showing it hell. Looking brazen and wild, she spits a strand of hair from her mouth and kicks the dummy square in its chest.

My fist shoots out and jabs the dummy in the chest. I'd never really been in a fight before, but honestly, how hard could it be?

Being a Candor, obviously, I wasn't very well liked in school by the other faction members. Some of the only people who did like me had been my teachers, only because they could always count on the Candor to be honest about whether or not they'd done their homework. Despite being disliked because of my faction, no one really picked fights with me. Maurice, Dmitri, Nikolai and I often got dirty looks cast as us; mostly from the Dauntless and Erudite. The Abnegation would never dream of looking at us for too long, let alone cast us a glare or anything remotely unfriendly. Same goes for the Amity.

The session carries on, with the sound of fists hitting rubber echoing throughout the large facility.

"Did you even eat lunch just now, initiate? Put more strength behind your blows! No one - not even little Bonnie over here - would be bowled over by that," Ila barks, glaring at me.

I pant, trying not to let her get to me as I continue my fruitless assault on the target dummy.

"Hey! I bet I could take him," Bonnie snaps, looking slightly hurt.

"Sure you could. We'll find out tomorrow what each of you are worth," Ila says, before turning around and stalking off.

*

That night at dinner, Brooklyn sidles into the seat next to mine again.

"How was training?" she asks, stabbing a slice of chocolate cake on the end of her fork.

"It was horrible," I spit. "I might as well be swat my opponent with a fly swatter for all the good I'll do with my punches. I'm going to fail Stage One for sure."

"Hmph," she mutters. "Candor coming out in you again. You don't have to be so brutally honest. Optimism is key, remember?"

She grabs my arm, eyes lit up with a sudden revelation. "Hey, I just remembered something I wanted to ask you! You want to get a tattoo?"

"Um, maybe not now," I say. "I mean, I might not even make it past initiation, so..."

"So, all the more you should get one, in case you do fail. As a...well, a keepsake, of sorts. Though you needn't worry. I don't think you'll fail. My brother's told me that most faction transfers are always a bit...well, uncertain...during Stage One. The Dauntless-born will have trained for Stage One all your life. As long as you make it past that, Stage Two and Three are fair game for all of us," she says.

"Maybe I'll get a tattoo another day," I say.

Someone heaves his large form into the seat across from me and I look up from my plate to see Frank's large olive eyes looking back into mine.

"I just overheard a couple of the instructors talking with Freeman," he says. "They were mentioning something about a field trip tomorrow."

"Oh, yeah! My brother Berkeley's taking us out to see the Fence. The one that's patrolled by the Dauntless, near the Amity farms," Brooklyn chimes, looking excited. "People who get low ranks usually end up working those odd jobs."

"Speaking of the rankings, do more people get cut at the end of Stage Three? You mentioned that last night, didn't you?" I ask, turning to Brooklyn.

"Typically, only ten initiates make it into Dauntless," she says, looking at me. "So, if three of us are cut after Stage One, and there are eighteen of us...that leaves five to be cut after Stage Three, and ten of us will make it into Dauntless."

"Hey, Brooke. Funny seeing you here, associating with a Stiff and a Candor smart-mouth," someone calls out.

Brooklyn, Frank and I swivel round to see Brett strutting up to Brooklyn's side. "Come on, Brooke. Join us at our table. Miles's got a truly hilarious story about the time he blew up Mitch's birthday cake on his fourteenth."

Brooklyn casts me a slightly apologetic look before she grabs her plate and gets up, hurrying off after Brett.

I turn back to see Frank studying me curiously. "What?" I ask.

"Nothing," he says, hurriedly looking away.

"Nothing? As if."

Katrina slides in to sit next to Frank, but her attention is on me. "I think what was on dear Frank's mind here was that you seemed a little too attached to that girl."

"Do I?" I ask, taking a large bite out of my burger, trying to seem casual.

"Yeah. You kind of do," she says. "Frank here's just still trying to adjust to losing his Stiff ways. He's still too shy to speak his mind. You, on the other hand, have no reason to be shy - Candor like you. If you like someone, go ahead and tell her."

"Pfft. I don't like Brooklyn. At least, not _that_ way. Besides, I've only known her two days. She's just...well, she seems...I don't know...complex? She seems bent on being nice to me but at the same time..." I shrug.

"Just cause she's a Dauntless-born doesn't mean she's unfriendly to faction transfers like most of the others are. You're the one who's always stressing that I shouldn't take you for a stereotypical Candor. Why take her for a stereotypical Dauntless-born? I mean, I've seen that prat Miles and that big-shot Brett, thinking that they own this world and this initiation just because they've grown up here. But maybe not all of them are full of themselves," Katrina says.

"That's the Stiff in you coming out into the light," I say.

She smiles and lets out a little "humph", rolling her eyes. "Just because I like to think of the best in others doesn't automatically make me a Stiff. I've outgrown that."

"You seemed pretty Stiff back at the school. You and Mary could barely even hold a proper conversation," I point out.

"To tell you the truth, I was about to yell at her when your buddy Maurice interrupted. I was only trying to be friendly because I knew Mary was nervous for her test. We were neighbors and she used to cry over the smallest things. I'd wanted to put her at ease by having her talk a bit about herself - she was always so secretive - but she just wouldn't co-operate with me and I have to admit, your friend Maurice did me a favor. I would've blown my top at her without his interruption," Katrina says. "I almost kind of miss her. I didn't have many friends as a Stiff. She was one of the closest."

"Where did she go to? Did she stay or did she transfer?" I ask.

"She's in Amity now," Katrina says sourly.

"There's a bit of good news. If Frank's words are to be trusted, a guy named Berkeley's taking us out to the Amity farms tomorrow," I say. "You can go check on your friend."

Katrina's eyes light up. "You know what? I'd actually really like that."


	5. Visiting the Fence

Someone shakes me awake. I grunt, rolling onto my back in bed and squeezing my bleary eyes open an inch to see Freeman glowering down at me.

"Wake up, initiate!" he yells. "We're taking you lot on a little field trip."

*

The eight of us are bundled into one of two separate trucks. Freeman is driving the second one, which is full of the ten Dauntless-born initiates. Brooklyn gives me a knowing look and points to the man in the driver's seat in my truck. I take it to mean he's her brother, Berkeley.

"Get in," Berkeley calls to the rest of us from where he sits - his voice is rough and scratchy. "No seat belts in the back of the truck, so you'd all jolly well do your best to hold on to something."

He starts the engine and the two trucks take off down the dirt road; Freeman following next to Berkeley.

The bed of the truck jolts and shudders and we are thrown around like sacks of vegetables each time the truck goes over a pothole or a patch of rough terrain. Katrina yelps and falls into Robert's arms, who looks like Christmas came early. Bonnie looks terrified and clutches onto Lisa, who looks greenest of us all and is grabbing the side of the truck tightly, her knuckles turning white.

"Fun _ride,_ huh?" Vincent calls out to all of us over the sound of the trucks moving.

He looks to Robert, who is smiling sheepishly at Katrina, still sitting on top of him. Katrina scowls and swiftly pushes off of Robert, scooting over to Frank.

Vincent turns to look at me and I hear him laugh unkindly. "You alright there, Markus? Looking like you're about to have a fit, is what it is."

I growl at him, trying not to look as carsick as I feel. I may have more experience being driven around than most of the others; my father being the rich influential person in Candor that he is. However, he certainly didn't drive around at these speeds.

"I almost forgot; you don't do well with fast speeds, do you?" Alyssa - who is sitting across from me - asks, looking at me with an expression of cruel glee.

She looks to be the most relaxed of us all. She's undone her hair, and it blows behind her in the wind. With her hair away from her face, and with the light of the dawning morning bathing her in its glow, she looks radiant - she looks free.

"No," I grunt bluntly in response.

She opens her mouth and lets loose a clear, rich laugh. "How very _honest_ of you to admit your fear."

"It takes courage to be honest," I say back. "Shouldn't you be the one who should be afraid? You're returning to your old faction. Not afraid of how those banjo-strumming softies will treat you?"

"Please. You think the Amity are capable of anger?" she spits.

"I know what they are capable of," I say. "Tears. I hope you brought an umbrella to prepare yourself for the waterworks."

She rolls her eyes. "I'll have you know they're not all _banjo-strumming softies._ I'm sure it'll be fine. _You_ don't need to concern yourself with my affairs."

*

The trucks pull up near the gates leading out of the city. I hop out, nursing my sore back. Planting my feet on solid ground, I exhale slowly, stretching to loosen my aching back muscles.

I see Alyssa get out as well. Noticing me - and Vincent and Robert - watching her intently, she purposefully turns her backs on the Amity farms in the background, careful not to let us catch her looking wistful.

Katrina hops out next to me, looking similarly disgruntled. Her expression lightens considerably when she looks off into the distance, at the Amity farms. A couple trucks just like ours are driving our way, looking like they contain initiates too.

"Amity initiation," Katrina says to me. "It must be."

"What's that like? Will they be tested on how well they pick flowers or whatever it is the Amity do day-to-day?" Miles asks, looking disdainful as he saunters up to us.

"Actually, I hear it involves testing initiates on apple-picking, as well as how well they can keep the peace in their community. Stuff like that," Berkeley says, moving over to Miles. "I wouldn't brush aside the Amity as this namby-pamby, rainbows-and-unicorns faction. They're actually really important. Their main area of work is regarding agriculture. They keep our city fed. And Amity make the best guidance counselors because of their easy-going nature. It's hard to feel nervous about approaching an Amity about a problem."

"So, they're very much like the Stiffs?" Miles asks, casting Katrina a side-long glance.

"Perhaps. Except Stiffs find it hard to be open and chatty like the Amity do." As Katrina says this, she frowns, worried. "I hope Mary can adjust to that life."

"I'm sure your friend's fine," I say breezily. "Once she gains some confidence, I'm sure she'll be very happy there."

"I don't know," she mutters, looking slightly ticked off.

"Hey, you," Berkeley says, glancing at me and beckoning me to follow him to the side, away from Miles and Katrina.

Giving him a confused look, I follow, and he stands near the bed of the truck, waiting.

"What?" I ask.

"You're that Markus kid. The one my kid sister's been telling you about." It's not a question; it's a statement.

I nod. "That's me."

"You're a Candor." Again, another statement.

"Yes. Or, I was."

"It's still a part of you. I don't like my sister associating with those smart-mouths," Berkeley says, narrowing his eyes.

"Too bad you can't control her," I say. "You know it's the truth."

Berkeley nods. "I know. Don't worry. I'm not asking you to back off or anything. I know damn well I can't control who she hangs around with. Still, I just want to let you know that if you ever play with her feelings, I'm going to personally throw you down into the Chasm. Got that?"

He walks away before I can answer. My mind's still trying to work its way around the meaning of his words. "Play with her f- ...wait, surely he doesn't think that I-"

"Initiates! Gather round!"

I follow the others as we get together in a small crowd around Freeman. Freeman points to a few patrolling guards by the fence. "Those there are Dauntless guards. Their job is to patrol the gate leading in and out of the city. Only the Amity are allowed in and out, to do their agricultural business. Those who don't get above Rank 5 at the end of Stage Three will most likely end up with jobs here."

He folds his arms. "Let that be a little incentive to you guys that you ought to fight harder for a higher ranking. High rankings let you choose which jobs you can get, and if you're first to choose, you get a lot more options. Working in the government as a Dauntless leader is easily one of the most attractive choices."

His eyes light up with a bit of a sadistic gleam. "As Dauntless leaders, we get to carry out executions."

"Executions?" one of the Dauntless-born repeats.

"Yes. Three Dauntless leaders will each have one gun. One of those three guns is loaded with a bullet. The others are empty. None of them know which gun is loaded and which isn't. They each take turns to pull the trigger at the person about to be executed. It's always entertaining to try and guess who ends up being the one to fire," Freeman says.

"I ever mention how much of a sicko this guy is?" Berkeley asks, jabbing a thumb at Freeman good-naturedly.

Freeman snorts. "Whatever."

The group breaks up. Freeman goes to speak with Berkeley and I find Katrina standing with Frank by the side of the road, near one of the Amity trucks, which has just arrived.

I head over just in time to see someone climb out of the bed of the Amity truck to give Katrina a big hug. I recognize Mary, Katrina's friend - now dressed in red and yellow and looking considerably better the last time I saw her as a Stiff.

"Katrina. It's so good to see you again," I hear Mary say in a formal manner, releasing Katrina from her bear hug.

Katrina smiles awkwardly. "Good to see you too, Mary. I'd hug you back, but..."

"I know. The Dauntless aren't the hugging type. I understand," Mary says.

"How are you doing? Is Amity suiting you?" Katrina asks.

Mary's smiles flickers for the slightest moment before she replies. "It's great! It's going really, really great!"

"I'm glad to see you're happy," Katrina says, looking relieved. "I was afraid you'd have trouble adjusting...because-"

"Oh, Katrina, you're too sweet! Don't worry. The other Amity people are really, really, really nice to me! Mealtimes are a blast!" Mary says, smiling warmly.

She notices me and Frank standing at Katrina's shoulder. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your Dauntless friends?"

"This is Frank. He was a Stiff too, though I guess he didn't really hang out much with either of us back when we were still in Abnegation," Katrina introduces.

"I'm the kind of guy whose face is easily forgettable," Frank says sheepishly.

"This is Markus. He's a Candor, but he's stressing with utmost emphasis that he's not the usual snappy Candor smart-mouth he used to be," Katrina says airily.

"And I'm not!" I exclaim.

Katrina laughs. "Still got a long way to go, Markus."

"Regardless, you two seem to have dropped your Stiff ways fairly quickly," I say, indicating Katrina and Mary.

"Yeah, well, I never enjoyed being a Stiff anyway. It feels a lot more natural to not be restricted. I spent a good fifteen minutes in the girls' room on our first night here, just admiring my reflection," Katrina says.

"I was really homesick on my first night here," Mary pouts. "But the other Amity transfers were really nice! They comforted me when I cried."

"Frank here's still pretty Stiff though," Katrina muses, grinning.

"Hey! I've dropped the grey clothes!" Frank protested, sticking out his upper lip.

"You took one look at two Dauntless kissing on our first night and were absolutely scandalized!" Katrina exclaims.

"W-well, who in their right mind wouldn't be scandalized? It's so public! Stuff like that should be done in private," Frank splutters, blushing beet red.

"I should probably be going off now, Katrina," Mary says. "I don't want to keep the rest of my team waiting. They only stopped so I could talk to you."

"Good point. Besides, I don't think Freeman's too happy to see us associating with people outside our faction," Frank mutters in a low whisper.

Me and Katrina look over Frank's shoulder to where Freeman stands, watching us with narrowed eyes and a disapproving glare.

"Yeah, good point. Nice catching up with you, Mary. You...take care," Katrina says hurriedly.

Mary gives Katrina one last bear hug, to which Katrina does not hug her back. Then Mary pulls away and rushes back to the Amity truck.

*

"Today, we begin the first matches of Stage One!" Ila calls out.

Us eight initiates are gathered in the Training Center. A large blackboard is put up behind Ila, and on it are our names, written out in chalk. Each of our names is paired up with another.

"This is the list of the first few fights. You'll each be paired up against one opponent and both of you must fight until one of you cannot go on or if one of you concedes. Though I must warn you...Freeman will not be too pleased if he hears someone gave up in the middle of a fight," Ila warns.

She moves aside and lets us read from the blackboard.

 **VINCENT .VS. FRANK**  
 **LISA .VS. ALYSSA**  
 **KATRINA .VS. ROBERT**  
 **MARKUS .VS. BONNIE**

"You said you thought you could take tough guy over there, right?" Ila says to Bonnie, who is looking smug. "Why don't you prove it?"

Bonnie turns to regard me and she bites her lip when she considers how much taller I am compared to her. Her eyes roam up and down, scrutinizing me. "I guess we'll see."


	6. The First Fights

Vincent and Frank started off the first fight of Stage One. No matter how much I disliked him, my money was on Vincent to win, even though I was rooting for Frank. The big guy was still trying to outgrow his awkward Stiff behavior, which was something that he hadn't had as much luck as Katrina in pulling off.

To his credit, Frank did look to be a very strong person. My guess is he must have worked out on his own, in secret. I doubted his Stiff parents would've been very receptive to their son working out. They'd probably say 'improving your body is self-preservation and is to be frowned upon' or something along those lines.

Despite Frank's size, Vincent was almost just as big, undoubtedly stronger and not as hesitant to beat his opponent to the ground. There was no way Frank stood a chance. The two large boys scuffled for a while, but while Frank seemed content to just stay in an eternal struggle with Vincent without fighting back, it was another story with the latter. Vincent got a few good hits in and within five minutes, Frank was wheezing profusely as he collapsed, sporting a black eye and clutching his bruised ribs. Ila made Vincent carry Frank off to rest and she put Lisa and Alyssa in the arena next.

When Ila signaled for the fight to begin, Alyssa wasted no time in making the first move, swinging a swift right-cross and nailing a hesitant and surprised Lisa in the jaw. It was a swift end for Lisa right then as Alyssa kicked out her knees, grabbed her around the throat and put her in a sleeper's hold. Before the two-minute mark was even up, Lisa's knocked out cold and a triumphant Alyssa dragged her off to lie next to Frank.

Now, I watch as Katrina and Robert step up next. Robert smiles at Katrina, presumably in what he assumes to be a winning fashion. Katrina merely growls, cracking her knuckles, clearly unimpressed.

"That's not a very nice expression for a girl with a pretty face like yours," Robert comments.

Katrina ignores him. Ila signals and as soon as the fight begins, Katrina makes the first move, aiming a punch at Robert's head. The latter ducks and lunges forward, unceremoniously kneeing Katrina in the gut, any chivalry he'd previously displayed extinguished in a matter of seconds. I wince as he grabs her head and slams an elbow down into the back of her exposed neck, forcing her down to her knees. He lands a kick in her side and Katrina flips over onto her back, coughing weakly. When he moves to kick her again, she suddenly rolls to the side and rushes to get back on her feet again.

"Come on, Katrina," Frank splutters weakly from where he sits.

Katrina lets out a cry of anger and charges at Robert, planting a solid kick at his torso, which sends him staggering back. Before he can react or protect himself, she leaps forward and kicks him in the groin while still in mid-air.

Robert lets out a yelp as Katrina grabs his head and slams it into her knee. He drops to the floor, whimpering, as Katrina kicks him in the side like he did her. She keeps up her relentless attacks on him until finally, he cries out. "No more! Please! I yield!"

Katrina pauses, casting Ila a wary sidelong glance. I see her bite her lip, as if thinking about something. Apparently, arriving at a decision, I watch as she grabs Robert's head and she slams it down onto her knee a second time, effectively knocking him unconscious.

Katrina pants, glancing back at Ila, who nods impassively, her face devoid of emotion as she signals for Katrina to take Robert out of the arena.

Soon, me and Bonnie have taken their place and Ila gives the signal for the fight to begin.

More than aware of the other initiates - with the exception of an unconscious Robert - watching me, I raise my fists lamely as Bonnie and I circle each other. She bares her teeth, glaring at me defiantly, as if to show she's not scared of me, but her being almost a head shorter kind of ruins the effect.

Without warning, she rushes at me. I see her pull her right arm back and it looks like she's aiming a punch at my torso, so I tense up, bringing my arms down to block my midsection. It's at that moment that I realize she's feinting, but it's too late for me to react. By the time I realize the Erudite-turned-Dauntless initiate's strategy, it's too late to stop Bonnie's left fist from connecting with my unprotected jawbone.

I curse, keeling back, and the precious few seconds it took for me to recover from her first attack has left me exposed. She launches forward, planting a kick in my back that sends me sprawling onto my knees. For someone so small, she deceptively packs a lot of punch behind her seemingly weak stature. She grins down at me, before she slams an elbow into my back, knocking the wind out of me as I struggle, getting to my feet. Winded, I desperately swing a fist at her. She's so short that she barely has to duck to avoid my mismatched attack.

We trade blows for a while. She's small, but that makes it easier for her to scamper out of my range of fire. I'm bumbling around, trying to hit her only to find that she's sidestepped and is standing behind me instead. Each time I miss a swing at her, she retaliates by attacking me in an undefended area. As ten minutes comes and goes, I've barely landed more than ten hits on her and she's reduced me to a dazed, blindly attacking mess.

I see Ila shaking her head in disappointment out of the corner of my eye. That's the last thing I notice before Bonnie knocks me right off my feet with a well-placed and surprisingly strong roundhouse kick.

*

I'm still groaning half an hour after my humiliating defeat. I sit - my head resting on my hand - at my table with Katrina, Frank and Brooklyn during lunchtime. Frank doesn't look in particularly good shape either. Vincent had been brutal in taking Frank down and Frank's black eye doesn't look like it will subside for at least a week.

"I still can't believe you lost," Katrina says smugly, eyeing me out of the corner of her eye as she takes a big bite out of her burger.

"She may have been small, but she was fast. And surprisingly strong," I say in defense.

"I concur," I hear someone say from behind me.

I turn to see Bonnie standing there, looking pleased with herself. "Don't beat yourself up too hard about it, eh? I'm an Erudite - or at least, I was. Strategy's more my thing than brute force."

With that, she hurries off to join her friend Lisa, who is waiting for her at another table.

"I have to commend her on that. Her strategy with feinting attacks and keeping out of your range was really effective - at least, for her," Katrina comments, looking at Bonnie as she scampers away.

"Yeah, well, I just hope my next fight goes better," I grumble.

"Relax, Markus. You'll get better. When I first got in a fight, I was kicked around like a plaything by a bunch of other girls. But the more they did it, the more determined I was to pay them back," Brooklyn says brightly. "It took a month of rigorous training, but finally I was the one doing the kicking around. They didn't bother me anymore - much. This is still Dauntless after all."

"I hope so," I mutter. "It's just embarrassing. Everyone thought I'd beat Bonnie."

I narrow my eyes at Katrina and Frank. "Don't deny it."

Katrina shrugs and Frank blushes. "Well, you were considerably bigger than her. I think it was a surprise to all of us when she knocked you out with that roundhouse kick."

"She must have been training in secret just like you did," Katrina says to Frank and he turns even redder.

"H-How'd you-?" Frank splutters.

"A Stiff doesn't get to this level of muscle without some form of exercise," Katrina says casually.

"I personally hope I don't get your big friend again," Frank says, looking across the table to where Vincent sits with a mortified-looking Robert at a nearby table.

"If anyone's going to be my 'big friend' around here, it's you," I say. "Not Vincent. And speaking of my fellow Candor mates..."

I turn to Katrina. "What was that with you and Robert?"

"What do you mean?" Katrina asks.

"Robert conceded. He'd begged you to stop. He gave up the fight. But you still knocked him out."

Katrina shrugs. "You heard what Ila said. Freeman was most likely going to punish anyone who gives up in the fights. So I decided I might as well finish off Robert, rather than let him walk away from the fight but have to face Freeman later."

She takes another nonchalant bite out of her burger and pauses when she sees me still staring at her. "What?"

"Just didn't think you'd do something like that for a Candor smart-mouth," I say. "I thought you hated us."

"I did, but can you imagine what Freeman would have done to Robert instead? Better me knocking him out than leaving him to deal with Freeman," Katrina argues. "That would just have been selfi- That would just have been mean of me."

"Brooklyn!"

Before I can reply Katrina, I turn to see Brett approaching our table for the second time in two days.

"Why are you here again?" Brett asks, now looking genuinely irritated.

"I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to sit wherever I want in my own faction," Brooklyn says, looking annoyed herself.

"It's just...most of the Dauntless-born are together. You're the only one who's...well, not. I'm starting to think you prefer associating with the company of Stiffs and smart-mouths as compared to your childhood brethren," Brett accuses, folding his arms.

Brooklyn lets out a humorless laugh. "Childhood brethren? Just cause you've been mad crushing on me for the past six years does not instantly make us friends, Brett. I've made it clear that I find you repugnant."

Brett scowls. "I see you've decided where your loyalties lie, Brooklyn."

Brooklyn rolls her eyes. "Jeez, Brett, you're making a big deal out of nothing. I'm just trying to make some new friends."

"Whatever. Alyssa can make up for your absence. She's twice the Dauntless you are." With that, Brett stomps off.

"Alyssa, Alyssa, Alyssa. That's all I've been hearing from my fellow 'childhood brethren' nowadays. 'Oh, Brooklyn, Alyssa's so amazing! Oh, Brooklyn, she's an amazing fighter! Oh, Brooklyn, come and kiss Alyssa's boots with us!'" Brooklyn scowls even more fiercely, looking indignant.

"She's making a lot of friends, isn't she?" Katrina asks.

"There's something about her. She's the most un-Amity like Amity transfer I've ever known. Amity transfers aren't common in Dauntless, and when we do get Amity transfers, most of them are just doe-eyed soft-spoken fools that usually don't make it past Stage One of initiation, let alone Stages Two and Three," Brooklyn says.

"And how do you know all this?" Katrina asks suspiciously.

"Berkeley. Best big brother ever. I was a curious child when I was younger and he fed me information about initiation. Don't worry, nothing that would give me an advantage that could let me cheat. I'm just as in the dark about the events of Stage Two and Three as you guys are," Brooklyn replies.

*

Next morning, the transfers return to the Training Center, where Ila has drawn up a new round of matches.

 **ALYSSA .VS. ROBERT**  
 **FRANK .VS. BONNIE**  
 **VINCENT .VS. MARKUS**  
 **LISA .VS. KATRINA**

I groan as soon as I see it, but Frank looks relieved.

"She took care of me like I was no challenge! Why are you happy you got Bonnie?" I ask him.

"She's no Vincent - that's for sure," Frank says. "Sorry, Markus."

I groan again.


	7. Capture the Flag, Pt 1

Vincent makes quick work of me and I stumble into bed that night, sore and hurting in several places, sporting as many bruised ribs as Frank no doubt has as well. Speaking of Frank, in spite of knowing Bonnie's strategy, he still managed to lose to her. He's even larger than I was, so he'd had a harder time trying to catch up with Bonnie each time she evaded his attacks and scampered out of his line of sight until she finally decided to end it with a swift kick to the shins that knocked him flat.

The other fights took longer than the first few did. Robert tried to hit on Alyssa - just like with Katrina - but it didn't work either. He managed to avoid hits to the groin this time and he fought to the bitter end. Despite Robert not yielding, Alyssa still managed to swiftly knock Robert out and it's not looking too good for him - that's two battles he's lost now; just like me and Frank. As for Katrina and Lisa, Lisa came out on top, though admittedly it was a much closer battle than it had been when Lisa had fought Alyssa. Lisa was a lot more prepared this time and she got a few commendable hits in. Katrina may have lost to Lisa, but she's still in a higher ranked position than me, Robert and Frank - the three of us have lost both the fights we've been in. We need to buck up, otherwise us three could end up becoming the initiates who get cut after Stage One. No matter how optimistic Brooklyn is, my time in Candor makes me more of a realist, and I am determined to make it through.

As for the others, though, Alyssa and Vincent look to be the two initiates in the best position. They've won both fights and are easily the most feared competitors. Lisa and Katrina are neutral. Bonnie's good - but only when paired with an opponent much larger and slower than herself, which means she probably wouldn't win in a fight with people like Alyssa or Katrina.

That night, after a lot of convincing and simpering and persuading, Brooklyn finally gets me to agree to get a tattoo and off she goes, dragging me to the nearest tattoo parlor.

Once there, I flip through pictures of available tattoos, as Brooklyn sits in the chair, looking excited as a large burly man gets to work on her. After a while, she's up, with a new tattoo of the Dauntless symbol on her left arm.

I take my seat and show the tattoo artist my choice. When I next see Katrina and Frank at dinner, they look surprised to see the set of scales emblazoned on the back of my right hand.

"Scales? That was your choice?" Katrina asks, looking incredulous.

"Isn't the Candor symbol supposed to be a set of _unbalanced_ scales? Those scales are balanced," Frank says.

"I know," I reply. "It's a little sign of rebellion. I specifically asked for the Candor emblem and told the artist to make the scales balanced instead. To show that sometimes, it's good to balance between truth and lies. Being honest all the time isn't what it's cracked up to be. It's nothing but trouble."

I show them the back of my left hand, where the Dauntless symbol is. "Out with the old, in with the new. One hand that displays my past and another of my future."

I shrug. "Besides, it looks cool."

Katrina rolls her eyes and I turn to her. "You could get one too."

"I plan to. Perhaps tomorrow," she says, just as Brooklyn slides into the seat next to mine. Brooklyn's face is lit up with excitement and she turns to me.

"Hey, Markus," she greets, looking at my hands. "Tattoos aren't such a bad idea now, are they? Wonder why you wanted them on the back of your hands though."

"Cause it looked cool," I say simply.

"Not judging. Anyway, I just heard from my brother. Apparently, he and Freeman are taking us out on another field trip again - tonight," she says.

"Tonight?" Katrina repeats.

Brooklyn nods. "All eighteen initiates. Berkeley said it's going to be a game of some sort, and both Dauntless-born and transfers are working together."

"Out at night?" Frank mutters, his big brow creased in worry.

"Something you should know: the Dauntless are the kind of people that don't mind partying throughout the night. I'd get some dark clothes out after dinner and have them ready if I were you," Brooklyn advises.

*

Brooklyn's words turn out to be truth. Later that evening, Freeman makes the announcement just after dinner, calling for all eighteen Dauntless initiates to dress up in dark-colored clothing and gather outside the compound, near the train tracks.

When we arrive, we find Freeman and Berkeley standing by the tracks, waiting.

"What's going on?" one of the Dauntless-born asks out loud.

"We're going to play a little game. Everyone: step up and grab one gun and one box of ammunition," Freeman instructs.

Rather than getting a line, everyone pushes and shoves their way to the two crates near the two instructors. I snag one black gun and grab a small box of ammunition - labelled "PAINTBALL".

"Everyone, get on!" Berkeley yells as the train approaches.

It doesn't slow down and I gulp as I watch Berkeley take a few steps back before leaping onto it. The other initiates follow his example - Freeman has gone on too, not bothering to wait for us.

"Come on!" Brooklyn urges, suddenly appearing at my side. Together, we leap onto the train. I wobble upon landing inside. The train carriage shakes and shudders violently and I lean against a wall to steady myself. Alyssa smiles haughtily at me from the side, her windswept hair falling over her eyes, giving her a very devil-may-care expression.

"Tonight, we'll be playing a traditional Dauntless game - paintball and a mix of capture the flag. It's simple. Two teams. Two flags. Whichever team captures the opponent's flag wins. You have to find and steal the opponent's flag as well as defend your own. Your only weapons are the paintball guns that you now carry. Ammo is scarce so don't waste them all. And don't be deceived - paintball isn't real ammo but they hurt if they come into contact with bare skin and while we here in Dauntless would tell you to suck it up and deal with the pain, you don't want extra wounds on you during the critical phase of Stage One," Freeman says as soon as everyone has calmed down and are listening to him again. "The outskirts of the city will be our location for tonight's games. We're rather near the Erudite headquarters, but no heading into the city. Okay? That's out of bounds. We're playing away from the rest of the factions. No entering Erudite territory. Tonight's Dauntless night."

"The two teams will be led by me and Freeman each," Berkeley says. "There are eighteen of you: ten Dauntless-born and eight transfers, so each team will have a total of five Dauntless-born and four transfers each, to keep things equal. We'll be picking the teams now, starting with the initiates. Freeman, you start, buddy."

Freeman nods, turning to scrutinize each and every one of us, his gaze calculating. "Alyssa."

Berkeley nods. "Markus."

At first I'm confused as to why he'd pick me first out of all eight when I'm close to flunking and being among the bottom three. Then I remember who's brother he is.

"Vincent," Freeman says next.

"Katrina."

"Frank."

"Bonnie."

"Robert."

"Lisa," Berkeley finishes.

I move to join Katrina, Lisa and Bonnie by Berkeley's side - Frank casts me a forlorn look as he joins Vincent, Robert and Alyssa with Freeman.

"Now, the Dauntless-born. This time, you start," Freeman says to Berkeley.

"Brooklyn," Berkeley answers without hesitation.

They rattle off names - most of which I don't recognize, and soon enough, Brooklyn has joined my team. Along with her are two other guys - both of whom are total strangers to me - one other girl and Miles.

"You want to get off the train first with your team, or shall I?" Berkeley asks Freeman.

"Whatever," Freeman replies.

Berkeley shrugs, then turns to the nine of us in his team. "We're getting off the train now! Everyone, follow my lead!"

With that, he leaps off without warning and I scramble to follow the others.

*

Berkeley leads us down a winding, moonlit dirt path. Abandoned houses and collapsed rubble lines the road on both sides. The only other sound to be heard is the crunching of gravel and broken glass underneath our boots.

Brooklyn walks alongside me; Katrina as well. The Noses bring up the rear of the group. Miles chats with one of the Dauntless-born boys - whereas the other two Dauntless-born; boy and girl; are holding hands as they walk behind us.

Brooklyn keeps pace with her brother and me and Katrina follow suit. "So, bro, where'd you put the flag last time you played this game?"

Berkeley chuckles. "I'm not telling you that, Brooke. This game's meant to be fair and square. You're all meant to learn something from this."

"Which is...? Competitiveness?" Katrina suggests.

"Teamwork. Strategy. Sportsmanship." Berkeley shrugs as he lists them off. "Stuff like that used to be core values in Dauntless. Nowadays, it's only about upper body strength or about how many hot dogs you can eat before puking it all back out."

He shakes his head. "Don't get me wrong, I love doing crazy and wild things like stuffing myself full of sausage meat. It's just that...Dauntless used to mean something. Something more important than that. We protected the city. When I was younger, I used to look up to the older Dauntless as heroes. But whenever I see the way they make us beat up our own faction brothers and sisters, whenever I see someone being punished severely for showing even the slightest sign of weakness...I feel nothing but shame."

"Jeez, bro. Downer much?" Brooklyn scoffs. She clings onto his arm in a sisterly fashion. "You're being melodramatic! It's not like we've completely abandoned our duties defending the city. Chicago needs us, y'know. We're not useless just yet."

Berkeley harrumphs and puts his arm around his sister. The two of them stride forward, in step. Miles hurries over and catches up with us. "So, where are we going?"

Berkeley turns around to regard him, scratching his head. "Well, you guys should probably get to thinking of your game strategy. Where are you going to put your flag? Who are you going to have on offense, and who on defense? And how you're going to find the opponents' flag? I can't hold your hands and help you guys out every step of the way, y'know."

Miles scowls, but his Dauntless-born friend surveys the area calculatingly. "We should get a little further away from the tracks. Find somewhere more enclosed so they won't have an easy time getting to us and the flag."

"Good point, Rafael. I know of an abandoned shopping complex not too far from here. It was closed down a long time ago because of a rat infestation. We could hide the flag in there," Berkeley says.

At these words, Lisa turns pale. "A r-rat infestation?"

"Don't worry. Chances are the rats would have cleared off a long time ago. Even if they're still there...the mall's still a good place to hide the flag. And you guys are Dauntless, so I'm sure you can handle a bunch of rats on your own," Berkeley says. "Let's move, people!"


	8. Capture the Flag, Pt 2

The mall is a decrepit and desolate building. One side of the wall on the ground floor has been blown open. Bricks and plaster lie in pieces on the floor. I take care to step around the debris as I join the rest of my team standing in the middle of the once grand shopping complex. The inside of the building is dark and smells of must. Lisa's face turns even paler when she hears the distant squeaking of rats coming from somewhere within the gloom. She clutches Bonnie and the two Noses hold onto each other for support.

Rafael grimaces, wiping a coat of dust off of a nearby bench with his finger, holding them up to the moonlight streaming in from the crater in the roof. "This place hasn't been visited for...how long again?"

"It was built fourteen years ago. It fell into disrepair six years after its development. The Amity used to run this place. They thought it was a very cute idea, having little gift shops and food courts to get people together. Shopping complexes used to be popular. It didn't work out very well though. Factions are better being...well, on their own. It's best for people of different factions not to mix because clashing is inevitable. This place would have closed down even without the rat infestation, if you ask me," Berkeley sniffs with disdain.

The Dauntless-born girl picks up a lone magazine lying on the ground and flips through it. Tattered pages drop out along with a squashed cockroach. She sticks out her tongue in disgust, throwing it back down to the ground.

"This place is disgusting, bro!" Brooklyn whines, wrinkling her nose.

"That's good. Maybe the dirt and grime will scare the other team off, if the rats and insects don't," Berkeley says nonchalantly. "Now, team, get to formulating a plan."

"Alright, there are ten of us, right? We should have four of us on defense, and have the other six split into two teams and flank the opponent team's base to get the flag," Miles says, propping his gun up on a bone dry fountain.

"That's not a bad idea. Who should we have on which team?" the Dauntless-born boy asks.

"Who's good on defense?" Katrina asks.

"Titus and I can be on that team," the Dauntless-born girl says.

"I volunteer for offense," Lisa says hurriedly. "I'd rather not have to stay here with the rats."

"Where Lisa goes, I follow," Bonnie says loyally.

"I'm a good shot. I'd be better with a paintball gun if you want me to shoot someone," Miles says.

"I'm just as good," Rafael butts in.

"Okay, well, we should have one of you two stay here then," I suggest.

"I don't mind staying," Rafael says.

"I guess that leaves the two Noses and I on offense," Miles says, stretching his hands over his head.

"Rafael, Kathleen and I are going to need one more member on defense," Titus speaks up.

I look from Brooklyn to Katrina. "Uh..."

"I'll stay," Berkeley says. I turn to find him sitting on the edge of the fountain, shaking his leg nonchalantly, one hand clutching our team's flag. "You three join offense. The teams are all good to go, but y'all still have no idea where the other team's flag will be."

I turn to survey the area. Spotting a broken down escalator behind the fountain, I point to it. "Perhaps some of us should climb the escalators and get to the roof of this building. It'll be dangerous, what with the crater in the roof and all, but perhaps by getting to a higher vantage point, we'll be able to find out the other team's location."

I turn back to the rest of the group. "I'll climb. I'm not scared of heights. Some of you should also scour this area - to look for possible weak points in our defense that the opponent team may use to get in here and steal our flag. Check for unguarded exits and entrances to this mall. Look out for areas that are hidden from our line of sight such that we can't see if anyone would hide there."

"Venture out deeper into the mall? No way. I don't want to find more...rats," Lisa says. "I'll come with you."

"Me too," Bonnie says instantly.

Miles gathers the Dauntless-born in a group and begins assigning them areas of the mall to scout out. Katrina kicks a loose piece of rubble on the floor, looking sheepish. "What about me?"

"Go help the others," I say. "I think three people is enough to get up to the roof."

Katrina shrugs and regards me with a curious smile. "Yes, _sir."_

Before I can respond, Lisa grabs hold of my hand and beckons me to hurry. She, Bonnie and I make our way to the escalators at the other end of the mall and begin to climb.

"It's just too bad these metal staircases don't work anymore," Lisa pants. "I'd use them every day to get here and there."

"Don't be silly," I say. "You think the Dauntless would approve? Can you imagine escalators in the Pit? They'd say you'd need the exercise of climbing stairs on foot."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lisa snaps, looking annoyed.

"I'm just saying it wouldn't hurt for you to hit the gym every now and then," I say, shrugging.

Lisa lets out an angry gasp. "As usual, you Candor smart-mouths are ever the tactical geniuses. Even the Erudite have more charm than the lot of you. It's no wonder no one likes any of you."

"It's nothing to do with me once being Candor. The Dauntless would say the same," I say in my defense. "You've seen how Freeman can get, and Ila can be a bit harsh when it comes to physical training."

"Hark who's talking, Mark. Aren't you close to flunking Stage One anyway? Just fail and go be factionless already. You're as dreadful a Dauntless as you were a Candor," Lisa scowls.

"Shut it. Both of you. You're being idiots," Bonnie butts in. "Look - over there."

She points over to a door in the corner. A dimmed neon sign reading "EXIT TO ROOF" is nailed to the wall above it.

"That's where we need to go."

"Keen eyes," I say to her. I point to her glasses. "Why do you still wear those? That's Erudite eyewear."

"I don't wear them because I'm Erudite. I wear them cause I really can't see without them," Bonnie says.

I ponder this for a moment. "Wear contact lenses. You'd look much better without those things obscuring your face."

Lisa - still looking mad at me - storms ahead, leading the way to the door marked EXIT. She grabs the handle and grunts, tugging on it, before the door finally swings open with a screech as it scrapes the floor. A plume of dust billows out at us as it squeaks on its hinges. Beyond the door are a set of stairs leading up into the gloom.

"Men first," Lisa says scathingly, mockingly pointing a finger for me to venture forward.

"Don't worry, I'm sure there aren't any rats in here," I snort as I walk in.

*

Lisa, Bonnie and I soon emerge out onto the roof. The crater is about the size of my apartment in Candor. The hole is right in the middle of the roof. One misstep and I'd go tumbling down five storeys to my death. The moon shines bright, directly overhead. Bonnie shivers as she steps up to the edge of the large crater, peering down, clutching onto her glasses with her free hand to keep them from slipping off. "It's an awfully long way down."

"Not scared of heights, are you?" I ask.

"If I was, I wouldn't have volunteered to follow you up here. Mind you, if not for us two Noses, I bet you'd be coming up here alone. No one seems to like you very much," Bonnie says to me irritably.

I think of Brooklyn - being bossed around by Miles downstairs, of Katrina - who'd looked so forlorn at being made to stay with the others, of Frank - who'd looked so upset to be with the other team. "I wouldn't exactly say that."

Bonnie sighs. "Markus, I'm sure you're a nice guy. You're much better than those other two Candor smart-mouths who came to Dauntless with you. Still, you have a tendency of voicing your thoughts out loud, even when they hurt others."

She points to the tattoo of the balanced scales on the back of my right hand. "I heard you talk about your tattoo to the Stiffs earlier. You said you wanted to balance between truth and lies. Well, try harder, would you?"

She turns to look at her friend Lisa, who is standing a distance away from us, peering away from the mall, squinting across the area to look for signs of the opponent's team. "You really hurt her feelings just now, you know?"

"I just...I mean, the Dauntless are careless with their words too. I can't imagine it's the first time she's been insulted about stuff like her weight," I protest.

"It isn't the first time. Which is exactly why it hurts her. She's always been hurt by things like that. She came to Dauntless to prove that she could be strong," Bonnie said, looking cross.

I bite back a retort and shrug. "Well, I'm sorry. Okay? It's not easy to forget my past faction."

Bonnie looks away. "It's not easy for any of us."

"Guys, come here," Lisa calls over. "I think I see something. Watch your step."

Carefully, Bonnie and I walk over to stand by Lisa.

"What is it?" I ask her.

Lisa points. Directly ahead of us, I can see a few buildings dotting the nighttime skyline in the distance. A few lights flicker near one of the large structures. I see the unmistakable outlines of human figures silhouetted in the moonlight, walking back and forth.

"That must be it," she says. "I think that's a museum, not far from here. It could be where they've hidden the flag."

I nod. Then, remembering what Bonnie said, I add. "You have keen eyes too, Lisa."

She looks at me, her auburn eyes wide with surprise. "Excuse me?"

I shrug. "Don't get used to compliments like that. Now, let's go tell the others."

*

When it comes down to assigning teams, Miles offers to take charge of the team with himself, Brooklyn and Katrina, claiming that he thought the two girls were the best fighters out of all six of us in the offense team.

"No," I say.

"Why not?" he asks, looking disgruntled.

"We should mix the teams up. You take Lisa and Bonnie. I'll go with Brooklyn and Katrina," I tell him.

"Why? You want to get in a threesome with the two hot chicks, is that it? You're going to leave me with the nerd girls?" he asks, crossing his arms.

"On the contrary, you said so yourself: Brooklyn and Katrina are the two better fighters among us six. And you claim to be a good shot yourself. Therefore, if all three of you good fighters are on one team, and you leave me and the two Noses on the other, that means we're unbalanced," I explain. "One team of good fighters and another team of less...well, less...less skilled ones. If the two teams flank the opponent's group, they'll have an easy time dispatching us. We need to have teams with equal skill. If you're really as good as you claim to be, I'm sure you're worth both Brooklyn and Katrina. So, you can take the two Noses, and I'll take Brooklyn and Katrina. Don't worry - Lisa and Bonnie aren't half bad themselves. One of them knocked me out; why don't you try guessing which?"

I don't mention to Miles my second reason of not wanting to be on the same team as Lisa and Bonnie - Lisa's still mad at me about what happened earlier and I don't want to still be near her while her anger hasn't subsided.

Miles bites the inside of his cheek. "Fine. Deal's a deal, Markus." He holds out a hand to shake. "Just don't think I don't know what you're really trying to do."

I shake his hand. "And what do you think I'm really trying to do?"

He winks at me. "Trying to hit on Brooklyn."

I pull my hand from his grip. "Why does everyone keep saying that? Is it that obvious that I like her?"

"She's hot. Who wouldn't like her?" Miles says. "Also, you're an ex-Candor. You're probably not very good at hiding things. The way you look at Brooklyn...you might as well have a sign telling everyone that you're attracted to her. I don't blame you, though. It's Brett you've got to watch out for."

I frown. "Him? What's he got to do with-"

"Take it from me, alright? I've grown up with Brett for my whole life. He's one of my friends. And he's had a crush on Brooklyn for as long as I can remember. He's the kind of guy who plays dirty. So watch your back." With that, Miles turns back to face the others, who have been milling around the fountain. "Lisa! Bonnie! Come with me."

Brooklyn and Katrina walk up to me.

"So we're with you then?" Katrina asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Delightful," Brooklyn says, flashing me a smile.

I force a laugh. "Come on. Let's go get that flag."


	9. Capture the Flag, Pt 3

Brooklyn and Katrina walk alongside me as we make our way across the marsh. A little further ahead, in the distance, I spot the outline of the museum silhouetted in the moonlight. The moon itself is a white luminous orb glowing in the background. Its light shines through the foliage of nearby trees, showing us the path leading forward. We've left the mall behind, along with the four members of our defense team. Miles, Lisa and Bonnie are approaching the museum from the other side. We have to time our attack just right. Miles has given us just twenty minutes to approach our target and get into position.

Katrina grunts as she slaps her legs. "So many damn insects! I should have brought some repellent if I knew this was going to happen."

Brooklyn laughs. "Repellent? The Dauntless would tell you to-"

"Suck it up. Yeah, I got that vibe from them," Katrina cuts across her. In the moonlight, I see her scowl fiercely as she steps into a puddle of murky water.

"Not an outdoorsy person, are you?" I ask.

"No. Not really. As a Stiff, I never really got to do much of anything, actually. Being in Dauntless's the most fun I've had in years. Still, I'd much rather be punching someone's lights out or firing a gun rather than be wading through this muck," she says.

She sighs. "Teamwork, he says. Strategy and sportsmanship, he says. Remind me again how doing this is implementing any of those three values?"

"This is a Dauntless tradition, you know. I think it's rather creative. Capture the flag and paintball rolled-into-one. Just the sort of crazy thing the Dauntless would do," Brooklyn says lightheartedly, holding her gun in her hands easily, as if it were nothing more than a soft toy.

"You ever played paintball before?" I ask her.

"No. I've heard of it, though. Berkeley's played the game before, as an instructor. He's told me countless tales about it," she says enthusiastically. "You can only imagine how my interest has been piqued for ages, just listening to his tales. He's kept me excited about initiation ever since I was old enough to understand the bedtime stories he'd read me."

Her face falls out of the blue. "He's been more of a father to me than a brother, actually."

Katrina scrunches up her nose, looking curious, but says nothing.

"By the way," I say. "I've heard from Miles that Brett has a bit of thing for you. I mean, I know you mentioned that when Brett confronted you at our table a while ago, but still..."

"Oh, please. Brett and girls just don't mix. He's repulsive. He thinks he can get me to like him by using the same method that your little friend Robert tried on both Alyssa and Katrina over here. Suffice to say it's never going to work out between me and him," she snorts.

"So...what would you look for in a partner?" I ask, my heart beating unusually fast.

Brooklyn hums to herself before answering. "I don't know, actually. Typically someone who doesn't try corny pick-up lines like, 'Claustrophobia's one of my fears, but I'd be in a tight space with you any time.'"

Katrina giggles as Brooklyn scoffs. "Or how about 'If the chasm was called 'love,' would you fall in it with me?'"

Katrina mimics gagging. "That's just dumb."

Brooklyn chuckles. "My personal favorite is 'I thought I'd be Candor with you and tell you how much I like you.'"

Katrina bursts into quiet laughter. I try and laugh too, but for some reason, my throat's gone dry.

"Brett's tried all sorts," Brooklyn says. "It's almost kind of sweet - how he's so persistent. I'd have feelings for him back if he wasn't always so insensitive and self-centered."

"So...what else do you look for in a guy?" I ask.

"Oh, I don't know. Someone who doesn't like Brett just like me?" she suggests.

"No. I'm serious," I say, my palms sweating.

Katrina stops laughing.

"Well...preferably someone who can be brave with me. I like a guy who can be brave when need be, but isn't always lording it over me. As a girl, I want to have moments in my life where I can be the brave one too, and not always be the side character compared to the boys," Brooklyn says. "My preferred partner would also have to be more low-key. I'm not a girl with very high expectations. He doesn't have to take me to a classy restaurant or anything for a date. Burgers, an action movie, and Dauntless chocolate cake is just fine for me."

She taps her chin as we keep walking. "He'd also have to be smart. I don't like someone who's all brawn and no brain. Frankly, I value intelligence more than muscles. And I actually have a thing for guys the same height as me. I don't like guys taller than me. It's strange, I know most girls like guys who are taller. Not me. Berkeley's always been taller than me for years and so I guess I've always hoped for a guy who I could look straight at rather than have to crane my neck upwards to speak to."

"What else...?" she murmurs to herself, deep in thought. I catch Katrina studying my expression out of the corner of my eye.

"Ah, well, he has to be Dauntless. Preferably, obviously. But Choosing Day's over. I'm in Dauntless and so my future husband's got to be too," Brooklyn says, grinning. "Though I'm not thinking of marrying just yet. Jeez, that's like, too soon. I just want a guy who I can run around with and have fun for a few years. No pressure. No worries. Just...you know...having fun."

She turns to me. "What do you look for in a partner then, Markus?"

I stutter, trying to form a response with my bone dry tongue and malfunctioning throat, but Katrina rushes forward and puts a hand on my chest to hold me back. She points forward.

The museum is just up ahead. I hadn't realized how much we'd walked in the last five minutes.

"Get down," I hiss to the girls and the three of us crouch down among the blades of grass. I spot a few initiates standing guard at the entrance to the museum. Somewhere in there, the flag is hidden.

"Scout out the guards," I say to them.

"Already ahead of you," Brooklyn whispers back playfully. "Two guys standing by the entrance - both Dauntless-born. I can see Brett on the second floor. It looks like he's talking to your Candor friend, Vincent. Your friend Frank's on the third floor, with Freeman. I don't see anyone else. They must have left these six on defense. Everyone else must be heading out to look for our flag."

"How did you see all that?" I ask, both in awe and out of bewilderment.

"I've been told I have keen eyes," Brooklyn says, winking.

"You're not the first person who's been told that," I say, grimacing. "Alright, so how are we going to breach their defenses?"

"Freeman's playing the defense card. He's left six guys on defense. Six! That's not an easy task. On the bright side, that means he's left four guys on offense, headed to combat our four on defense at the mall. We need to flank these guys and get to their flag first before their team gets to ours," Katrina says.

"Where's Miles and the others?" I murmur.

Before our two groups set off, we'd agreed with the other team on a signal to signify that both groups were in position and ready to attack the opponent's team. Miles was supposed to hoot like an owl once he, Lisa and Bonnie were ready. Then, I was supposed to reply with the sound of a crow - as the signal to attack.

"I don't hear the signal. They must not have reached their position yet. We got here early," Katrina says.

I hear the sound of shouting. Looking up, I spot Vincent and Brett on the observation deck, up on the second floor of the museum. Both are yelling at each other. I watch as Freeman climbs out on the third floor balcony, calling down to them to quiet down.

"Dissension among the ranks. Beautiful," Brooklyn says, grinning.

Out of the blue, I hear the unmistakable sound of a hooting 'owl'. I call back, mimicking a crow's 'caw', as Brooklyn and Katrina ready their guns. Counting to three with my fingers, the three of us burst out of our hiding places, charging for the museum.

*

I spot Miles a distance away, charging in from the other side of the museum. Lisa and Bonnie trail behind him. Miles fires his gun and I see him nail the two Dauntless-born guards in their surprise. He wasn't lying - he was a good shot. I hear Lisa shriek as she fires her gun, sending a volley of paintballs flying up into the air uselessly.

"Come on! Second floor!" I call out as I run up the stairs, Brooklyn and Katrina at my heels.

We emerge onto the second floor landing in time to see Vincent pop up from behind cover, firing his gun and sending paintballs flying our way.

"Duck!" Brooklyn cries.

She lunges for cover behind a display case containing Civil War mementos. I drop to the floor and crawl over to hide behind another display case. Katrina yelps as the paintballs hit her square in the chest. She staggers backwards, tripping and tumbling back down the stairs.

"You're not getting the flag, Markus!" Vincent yells as another spray of paintballs peppers the side of the display case I'm hiding behind.

Brooklyn lets out a war cry of sorts, getting up behind the Civil War case and returning fire. I hear Vincent cry out in pain.

"You're paying for that!" I hear him yell.

Brooklyn ducks back down behind cover. "Markus, I don't see Brett!"

I peer around cover. No sign of Brett anywhere. Vincent gets up from behind cover and fires a round of ammo over at where Brooklyn is hiding. Raising my gun, I emerge and fire a round at him. A few paintballs splatter across his front and some hit him in his bicep, which is unprotected, causing him to curse and flinch with each hit.

Just then, I hear someone's maniacal cry and turn just in time to see Brett firing his gun at me. I duck as the paintballs sail over my head. Brett emerges from his hiding spot behind a statue of some Civil War general. Without a word, he fires at me again and I rush to get to my feet. I feel a paintball nail me in the leg and I gasp out loud, lunging forward and leaping over a display case, dropping down behind cover next to Brooklyn.

I wince as I feel the impact of the bullets thudding against the wooden display case. Paint splatters the floor and walls and I reload my gun hastily.

"Hey, Brett!" Brooklyn calls out to him. "Are you sure you're not in Abnegation?"

"I'm pretty sure about that, Brooke!" he yells back as he fires another round. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I think I'm making you Stiff," Brooklyn yells back.

He goes silent. In his hesitation, Brooklyn gracefully rises up from behind cover and I watch her face as she fires. Her smile is stretched wide, revealing rows of shiny teeth, and I hear her cry out in triumph as she fires again and again. "This is the best game ever!"

I hear Brett's strangled cry. Brooklyn turns and offers me a hand to help me up. "Come on! The flag's on the third floor. We've got to get up there!"

I turn to see Brett crouched on the floor, clutching his right leg and hand in pain, his gun lying uselessly on the floor.

"That was a terrible pick-up line," he protests to Brooklyn as she and I run past him.

Brooklyn kicks his gun away from his reach and shrugs. "I thought it was clever. Thought of that in the heat of the moment."

I catch sight of Katrina hobbling her way up the stairs. "Go!" she yells at me. "I'll stay here and make sure neither of these two idiots come after you!"

"Let's go!" Brooklyn says. Grabbing my hand, she hurries up the stairs, me directly behind her.

The flag is propped up on the edge of the third floor balcony. Freeman stands before it, hefting his gun impressively. Between us and him stands Frank, looking large and imposing, a giant silhouette carrying the paintball gun with deadly purpose - except for the fact that he's biting his lip, looking nervous and hesitant.

"Sorry, Frank, but we're taking that flag," I growl as me and Brooklyn stand side-to-side, each clutching our guns at the ready.

"I...I'm not going to let you," Frank says, setting his jaw.

"Show me how Dauntless you are, Frank. Remember - this is still initiation," Freeman calls out from where he stands on the balcony.

Frank swallows. "Yes, sir."

He raises his gun and I push Brooklyn to the side as Frank's bullets fly between us. I scramble for cover behind an exhibit. Brooklyn does the same. Frank's bullets splatter all around me. Paint of various colors and shades mix together, turning the floorboards into a mess of red and yellow, blue and green, purple and orange.

Brooklyn nods at me and I see her duck as she sneaks away from her hiding spot, into the gloom. Frank hasn't noticed her disappearing yet. I hear frantic footsteps thundering up the stairs and watch as Miles appears.

"What's happened?" Miles splutters, looking at me. "Where's B-"

Before I can warn him, Miles's previously paint-free clothes is splattered pink as Frank fires his gun. He lets out a grunt and falls back down the stairs. I hear Lisa shriek from down below.

"Sorry!" I hear Frank cry out. "I had to do it!"

"Don't waste my time. Finish them! Get them away from the flag!" I hear Freeman yell.

"These guys take Capture the Flag way too seriously," I mutter to myself as Frank fires another round.

Keeping low, I follow Brooklyn's example. Making sure to keep hidden, I sneak away from my previous hiding spot, taking cover behind another display case this time, without leaving any indication to Frank that I'm no longer at the place where he's shooting.

"Markus?" Frank calls out.

I peek around cover to see him standing where I was hiding barely ten seconds ago, looking confused to find me missing. Then I hear him cry out as paintballs splatter all over his back. He yelps as one hits him in the leg and just like that, Frank goes down. His gun goes flying out of his hands and clatters onto the floor, sliding over to me. Brooklyn emerges from the other side of the room, her gun in her hands, smiling in triumph. "Nailed him."

I get up from behind cover, tossing Frank's gun into a corner of the room as its owner groans, clutching his leg. "That hurt."

"All's fair in...well, war. And this game...is war," Brooklyn says, smiling.

"Hmph," Freeman grunts.

"Brooklyn, get down!" I call out.

She ducks just in time for Freeman's paintballs to fly over her head. Instead, they splatter onto my torso instead and I yelp, landing flat on my back as my shirt is stained a vibrant orange and yellow.

Brooklyn scurries over to hide with me as Freeman racks his gun menacingly. "You're not getting the flag! I've lost to Berkeley twice in a row! Not again!"

Brooklyn smiles to herself. "Good one, bro."

"I'm not losing to his little sister too!" Berkeley calls out. "Come on out and fight me if you really think you're Dauntless, girlie!"

Brooklyn turns to me. "Here, I've got an idea. Freeman hit you, right? Perhaps he thinks he's incapacitated you. I'm going to fire back at him. And while he's distracted, I want you to go the long way around and grab the flag while he's not looking."

"What? I can't- That's-" I splutter.

"I knew you thought it was a good idea too," Brooklyn says happily as she pushes me lightly. "Now, go. Quickly, Markus."

She fires a round of return fire, which Freeman dodges. "Like brother like sister, huh?" He fires back at her as I keep to the shadows, creeping along the edges of the walls, trying to circle around Freeman.

I hear someone clambering up the stairs. "Brooklyn!" Brett's voice. Brett has his back turned to me. I see him aiming at Brooklyn. Freeman's smiling now that his reinforcements have arrived. I don't know where Katrina's gone off too.

"You're right. I'm _plenty_ Stiff for you. Just not today!" Brett calls out.

I curse at myself as I heft my gun, aiming at Brett. Even if it meant alerting Freeman to my position, I wasn't going to let Brooklyn get shot. She was still uninjured so far. I look down my sights and squeeze the trigger. The volley of bullets shoots out and hits Brett in the back before he can fire at Brooklyn. He cries out in alarm and he fires his gun anyway. Only, he trips over his own feet and the paintballs fly away from Brooklyn, splattering instead all over Freeman, who lets out a grunt and falls to the ground.

"Now, Markus!" Brooklyn yells.

Lunging to my feet, I put on a burst of speed and I charge out of my hiding spot, running past Brett and Freeman.

"No!" Freeman yells, scrabbling for his gun.

It's too late. I shout in triumph as I rush out onto the balcony, snagging the flag from where it hangs and raising it into the air.

Brooklyn lets out a squeal, pumping her fist into the air as she rushes out to me. I barely have time to brace myself before she's crushing me in a tight hug. "We did it! We've won!"

"No!" Freeman spits, getting to his feet, looking livid. "No! NO! Three damn times in a row, Berkeley! Three damn times!"

"Ahahahahaha!" Brooklyn cheers, whooping. "That was _exhilarating!_ I can't even remember the last time I had that much fun!"

She kisses me on the cheek, still grinning over her latest victory. "I can't wait to tell Berkeley! And my mom! Woohoo!"

I smile, brushing my cheek. She didn't have to stand on her tiptoes to kiss me. We're almost the exact same height.


	10. Victory In The Ring

The next morning, Vincent is in a bad mood.

"Tough luck for Alyssa," I mutter to Katrina and Frank, looking at the blackboard on which Ila has written down the names for today's list of fights. "Vincent's going to take his anger out on her. It's the first time I've seen him that worked up about something."

 **VINCENT .VS. ALYSSA**  
 **LISA .VS. BONNIE**  
 **FRANK .VS. KATRINA**  
 **MARKUS .VS. ROBERT**

"I'm sure you can handle Robert, right?" Katrina says. "That guy lost to two girls. You've only lost to one."

Frank looks nervous. "I don't want to fight you, Katrina."

Katrina smiles at him, looking flattered. "Oh, Frank. You're cute, but I think I can handle myself."

Last night, Freeman had sent us all back to our dormitories as soon as the train dropped us off back at the Dauntless compound. The game of Capture the Flag had left several members of the opposing team extremely unhappy - most of all, Freeman. Berkeley had been pleased and was very proud of Brooklyn, boasting to Freeman about how his little sister got the better of him, which caused Freeman to set his jaw in a most menacing way.

Brett had been upset and not at all a good sport about the loss. Apparently, he'd managed to knock Katrina out while she'd been helping Miles up from when Frank shot him and knocked him back down the stairs. Still, I'd overheard Brett repeating the word 'Stiff' to Brooklyn on the train - and her sighing in response.

Miles had approached me before the Dauntless-born and faction transfers separated.

"Maybe I was wrong about you, initiate. You did good out there. Brooklyn told me. Perhaps, if you survive Stage One, we might even be friends, eh?" he'd said.

Even Lisa had to admit begrudging respect for my recent victory.

"You can be a jerk at times, but you really pulled through for our team," she'd said. "And Bonnie told me about how you tried to comfort her on our first night here about...about Chris. I'm sorry if either of us are a bit touchy towards you. We're not very nice towards Candor, back when we were in Erudite. Still, it was nice of you to have tried to speak with Bonnie that night. I guess perhaps you're not a total jerk after all. Don't get used to compliments like that, though."

Our team's victory's definitely earned me some points with the other initiates. Rafael came up to my table with Katrina and Frank earlier today to congratulate me on a job well done. Titus and Kathleen gave me a slice of cake, supposedly out of gratitude. And Berkeley told me he doesn't mind anymore if me and Brooklyn want to continue hanging out.

All in all, it's been a great turn of events since last night. I'm hoping my good fortune carries over into today, that I may be able to win a fight for once. Beating up Robert won't be as satisfying as beating up Vincent - and I already know Vincent would beat me. But perhaps Robert and I will constitute for a fairer battle. We've both been equally bad in both our fights, after all.

Vincent and Alyssa's fight is easily the most intense battle we've ever had so far in Stage One. Both of them are fuming over their loss last night, and both of them are equally skilled and evenly matched. They fight for a good fifteen minutes, until finally, Alyssa is thrown backwards by one of Vincent's meaty fists and hits her head against the wall.

Next up are the two Noses and friends, pitted against each other. Lisa looks hesitant, but Bonnie doesn't. Ila gives the signal for them to begin and within two minutes, Bonnie has knocked her friend flat on her back. Though Bonnie had been in tears almost every single minute since first arriving here, she's turning out to be a lot more of a Dauntless than Lisa is. Come to think of it, she's proving to be almost just as good as Alyssa or Vincent. Heck, she and Vincent have won every fight they've been in. Keep this up, and Bonnie could end up being ranked second, despite her tears and despite her height. Still, I get a feeling Ila will pair Bonnie up with either Alyssa or Katrina. Perhaps Bonnie won't be as unbeatable when paired up with someone who's almost as fast and as nimble as her.

Katrina and Frank are up next. The result is easy to predict. Frank goes down and Katrina helps him to a seat. The big guy's lost every battle so far - the final battle tomorrow is going to be his last chance of redemption; of saving himself from being cut.

It's also going to be the last chance for either me or Robert, depending which one of us wins this next round.

"In the ring!" Ila calls.

Robert and I get in position. He bounces on the balls of his feet, fists raised, glaring over at me. He's not as cocky or happy-go-lucky as he was with Katrina and Alyssa. There is no small talk or confident conversation. This time, he's determined not to lose. The only thing standing in his way is me. He needs to win at least one round, otherwise, he's at risk of being cut, just like Frank. I need to win too, or I'll be in that position instead.

"Not going to hit on me?" I taunt.

He snorts. "Sorry. I'm not into that. Besides, I hear you're already 'Stiff' for Brooklyn."

The brief moment of hesitation I show is enough for him to launch an attack that catches me off guard. I stagger back, clutching my temple, winded, as he leaps up and kicks me in the chest, knocking me backwards.

"Go, Robert! Knock him down!" Vincent yells out to his friend.

I feel Robert's fist connect with my jawbone and I reel back, stunned. I can't let Robert win this match. I can't. Not after last night. I can't be cut from initiation. I won't be factionless.

Brooklyn's face swims before my eyes. The life I could have here in Dauntless flashes before me in visions. Robert looms over me, his fist swinging in my direction. Reaching out, I catch it before he can hit me and in his surprise, I slam a fist into his gut.

He chokes, the breath knocked out of him, and I swing a right cross at him, and jab at his throat, causing him to cough and splutter in pain.

"Come on, Robert!" Vincent yells.

"Go Markus!" Katrina cheers in retaliation.

Robert swings at me again but I step back and his fist sails through the air, connecting with nothing. As he stumbles and staggers drunkenly, I grab his arm and twist it back over his shoulder. He cries out in pain and I slam an elbow into his trachea. He squeaks and I kick him swiftly in the shins, as well as sweeping his feet out from under him. His knees buckle and he collapses onto the ground, groaning. Weakly, he raises his hands limply. "N...N...No more...I...I y-yield..."

I turn to glance at Katrina. She looks at me and nods. Turning back to face Robert, I shake my head. "You're not yielding."

I lean down and punch him in the face. Blood sprays out of his mouth. His eyes flutter shut. He's hurt. Badly. But at least, he's safe from Freeman.

I know Katrina approves.

I smile to myself as Ila signals for me to get him out of the ring, as well as telling us that we can now go for lunch.

I beat Robert. My first fight won.

Perhaps...just perhaps...I won't get cut. I might make it through this.


End file.
